Creating A Cloud-Based Storage System

ABSTRACT

Cloning storage systems in a cloud computing environment, including: receiving a request to create a cloud-based storage system; retrieving, from cloud-based object storage, one or more objects to include in the cloud-based storage system; and creating the cloud-based storage system, including storing, in block storage of the cloud-based storage system, data contained in the one or more objects retrieved from the cloud-based object storage.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This is a continuation application for patent entitled to a filing dateand claiming the benefit of earlier-filed U.S. Pat. No. 11,455,126,issued Sep. 27, 2022, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety,which is a continuation of U.S. Pat. No. 10,917,470, issued Feb. 9,2021, which claims priority from U.S. Provisional Application No.62/768,952, filed Nov. 18, 2018, and U.S. Provisional Application No.62/769,277, filed Nov. 19, 2018.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A illustrates a first example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1B illustrates a second example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1C illustrates a third example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 1D illustrates a fourth example system for data storage inaccordance with some implementations.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster with multiple storagenodes and internal storage coupled to each storage node to providenetwork attached storage, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing an interconnect switch couplingmultiple storage nodes in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storagenode and contents of one of the non-volatile solid state storage unitsin accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments ofthe storage nodes and storage units of some previous figures inaccordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2E is a blade hardware block diagram, showing a control plane,compute and storage planes, and authorities interacting with underlyingphysical resources, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades of a storagecluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities and storage resources in blades of a storagecluster, in accordance with some embodiments.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system that is coupled fordata communications with a cloud services provider in accordance withsome embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storage system in accordance with someembodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 3C illustrates an exemplary computing device that may bespecifically configured to perform one or more of the processesdescribed herein.

FIG. 4 sets forth an example of a cloud-based storage system inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 5 sets forth an example of an additional cloud-based storage systemin accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure

FIG. 6 sets forth a flowchart illustrating an example method of cloningstorage systems in a cloud computing environment in accordance with someembodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 7 sets forth a flowchart illustrating an additional example methodof cloning storage systems in a cloud computing environment inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 8 sets forth a flowchart illustrating an additional example methodof cloning storage systems in a cloud computing environment inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 9 sets forth a flowchart illustrating an additional example methodof cloning storage systems in a cloud computing environment inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 10 sets forth a flowchart illustrating an additional example methodof cloning storage systems in a cloud computing environment inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

FIG. 11 sets forth a flowchart illustrating an additional example methodof cloning storage systems in a cloud computing environment inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure.

DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS

Example methods, apparatus, and products for cloning storage systems ina cloud computing environment in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure are described with reference to the accompanyingdrawings, beginning with FIG. 1A. FIG. 1A illustrates an example systemfor data storage, in accordance with some implementations. System 100(also referred to as “storage system” herein) includes numerous elementsfor purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be notedthat system 100 may include the same, more, or fewer elements configuredin the same or different manner in other implementations.

System 100 includes a number of computing devices 164A-B. Computingdevices (also referred to as “client devices” herein) may be embodied,for example, a server in a data center, a workstation, a personalcomputer, a notebook, or the like. Computing devices 164A-B may becoupled for data communications to one or more storage arrays 102A-Bthrough a storage area network (SAN′) 158 or a local area network(‘LAN’) 160.

The SAN 158 may be implemented with a variety of data communicationsfabrics, devices, and protocols. For example, the fabrics for SAN 158may include Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband, Serial Attached SmallComputer System Interface (‘SAS’), or the like. Data communicationsprotocols for use with SAN 158 may include Advanced TechnologyAttachment (‘ATA’), Fibre Channel Protocol, Small Computer SystemInterface (‘SCSI’), Internet Small Computer System Interface (‘iSCSI’),HyperSCSI, Non-Volatile Memory Express (‘NVMe’) over Fabrics, or thelike. It may be noted that SAN 158 is provided for illustration, ratherthan limitation. Other data communication couplings may be implementedbetween computing devices 164A-B and storage arrays 102A-B.

The LAN 160 may also be implemented with a variety of fabrics, devices,and protocols. For example, the fabrics for LAN 160 may include Ethernet(802.3), wireless (802.11), or the like. Data communication protocolsfor use in LAN 160 may include Transmission Control Protocol (‘TCP’),User Datagram Protocol (‘UDP’), Internet Protocol (‘IP’), HyperTextTransfer Protocol (‘HTTP’), Wireless Access Protocol (‘WAP’), HandheldDevice Transport Protocol (‘HTTP’), Session Initiation Protocol (SIT),Real Time Protocol (‘RTP’), or the like.

Storage arrays 102A-B may provide persistent data storage for thecomputing devices 164A-B. Storage array 102A may be contained in achassis (not shown), and storage array 102B may be contained in anotherchassis (not shown), in implementations. Storage array 102A and 102B mayinclude one or more storage array controllers 110A-D (also referred toas “controller” herein). A storage array controller 110A-D may beembodied as a module of automated computing machinery comprisingcomputer hardware, computer software, or a combination of computerhardware and software. In some implementations, the storage arraycontrollers 110A-D may be configured to carry out various storage tasks.Storage tasks may include writing data received from the computingdevices 164A-B to storage array 102A-B, erasing data from storage array102A-B, retrieving data from storage array 102A-B and providing data tocomputing devices 164A-B, monitoring and reporting of disk utilizationand performance, performing redundancy operations, such as RedundantArray of Independent Drives (RAID′) or RAID-like data redundancyoperations, compressing data, encrypting data, and so forth.

Storage array controller 110A-D may be implemented in a variety of ways,including as a Field Programmable Gate Array (‘FPGA’), a ProgrammableLogic Chip (‘PLC’), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (‘ASIC’),System-on-Chip (‘SOC’), or any computing device that includes discretecomponents such as a processing device, central processing unit,computer memory, or various adapters. Storage array controller 110A-Dmay include, for example, a data communications adapter configured tosupport communications via the SAN 158 or LAN 160. In someimplementations, storage array controller 110A-D may be independentlycoupled to the LAN 160. In implementations, storage array controller110A-D may include an I/O controller or the like that couples thestorage array controller 110A-D for data communications, through amidplane (not shown), to a persistent storage resource 170A-B (alsoreferred to as a “storage resource” herein). The persistent storageresource 170A-B main include any number of storage drives 171A-F (alsoreferred to as “storage devices” herein) and any number of non-volatileRandom Access Memory (‘NVRAM’) devices (not shown).

In some implementations, the NVRAM devices of a persistent storageresource 170A-B may be configured to receive, from the storage arraycontroller 110A-D, data to be stored in the storage drives 171A-F. Insome examples, the data may originate from computing devices 164A-B. Insome examples, writing data to the NVRAM device may be carried out morequickly than directly writing data to the storage drive 171A-F. Inimplementations, the storage array controller 110A-D may be configuredto utilize the NVRAM devices as a quickly accessible buffer for datadestined to be written to the storage drives 171A-F. Latency for writerequests using NVRAM devices as a buffer may be improved relative to asystem in which a storage array controller 110A-D writes data directlyto the storage drives 171A-F. In some implementations, the NVRAM devicesmay be implemented with computer memory in the form of high bandwidth,low latency RAM. The NVRAM device is referred to as “non-volatile”because the NVRAM device may receive or include a unique power sourcethat maintains the state of the RAM after main power loss to the NVRAMdevice. Such a power source may be a battery, one or more capacitors, orthe like. In response to a power loss, the NVRAM device may beconfigured to write the contents of the RAM to a persistent storage,such as the storage drives 171A-F.

In implementations, storage drive 171A-F may refer to any deviceconfigured to record data persistently, where “persistently” or“persistent” refers as to a device's ability to maintain recorded dataafter loss of power. In some implementations, storage drive 171A-F maycorrespond to non-disk storage media. For example, the storage drive171A-F may be one or more solid-state drives (‘SSDs’), flash memorybased storage, any type of solid-state non-volatile memory, or any othertype of non-mechanical storage device. In other implementations, storagedrive 171A-F may include mechanical or spinning hard disk, such ashard-disk drives (‘HDD’).

In some implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D may beconfigured for offloading device management responsibilities fromstorage drive 171A-F in storage array 102A-B. For example, storage arraycontrollers 110A-D may manage control information that may describe thestate of one or more memory blocks in the storage drives 171A-F. Thecontrol information may indicate, for example, that a particular memoryblock has failed and should no longer be written to, that a particularmemory block contains boot code for a storage array controller 110A-D,the number of program-erase (PIE′) cycles that have been performed on aparticular memory block, the age of data stored in a particular memoryblock, the type of data that is stored in a particular memory block, andso forth. In some implementations, the control information may be storedwith an associated memory block as metadata. In other implementations,the control information for the storage drives 171A-F may be stored inone or more particular memory blocks of the storage drives 171A-F thatare selected by the storage array controller 110A-D. The selected memoryblocks may be tagged with an identifier indicating that the selectedmemory block contains control information. The identifier may beutilized by the storage array controllers 110A-D in conjunction withstorage drives 171A-F to quickly identify the memory blocks that containcontrol information. For example, the storage controllers 110A-D mayissue a command to locate memory blocks that contain controlinformation. It may be noted that control information may be so largethat parts of the control information may be stored in multiplelocations, that the control information may be stored in multiplelocations for purposes of redundancy, for example, or that the controlinformation may otherwise be distributed across multiple memory blocksin the storage drive 171A-F.

In implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D may offload devicemanagement responsibilities from storage drives 171A-F of storage array102A-B by retrieving, from the storage drives 171A-F, controlinformation describing the state of one or more memory blocks in thestorage drives 171A-F. Retrieving the control information from thestorage drives 171A-F may be carried out, for example, by the storagearray controller 110A-D querying the storage drives 171A-F for thelocation of control information for a particular storage drive 171A-F.The storage drives 171A-F may be configured to execute instructions thatenable the storage drive 171A-F to identify the location of the controlinformation. The instructions may be executed by a controller (notshown) associated with or otherwise located on the storage drive 171A-Fand may cause the storage drive 171A-F to scan a portion of each memoryblock to identify the memory blocks that store control information forthe storage drives 171A-F. The storage drives 171A-F may respond bysending a response message to the storage array controller 110A-D thatincludes the location of control information for the storage drive171A-F. Responsive to receiving the response message, storage arraycontrollers 110A-D may issue a request to read data stored at theaddress associated with the location of control information for thestorage drives 171A-F.

In other implementations, the storage array controllers 110A-D mayfurther offload device management responsibilities from storage drives171A-F by performing, in response to receiving the control information,a storage drive management operation. A storage drive managementoperation may include, for example, an operation that is typicallyperformed by the storage drive 171A-F (e.g., the controller (not shown)associated with a particular storage drive 171A-F). A storage drivemanagement operation may include, for example, ensuring that data is notwritten to failed memory blocks within the storage drive 171A-F,ensuring that data is written to memory blocks within the storage drive171A-F in such a way that adequate wear leveling is achieved, and soforth.

In implementations, storage array 102A-B may implement two or morestorage array controllers 110A-D. For example, storage array 102A mayinclude storage array controllers 110A and storage array controllers110B. At a given instance, a single storage array controller 110A-D(e.g., storage array controller 110A) of a storage system 100 may bedesignated with primary status (also referred to as “primary controller”herein), and other storage array controllers 110A-D (e.g., storage arraycontroller 110A) may be designated with secondary status (also referredto as “secondary controller” herein). The primary controller may haveparticular rights, such as permission to alter data in persistentstorage resource 170A-B (e.g., writing data to persistent storageresource 170A-B). At least some of the rights of the primary controllermay supersede the rights of the secondary controller. For instance, thesecondary controller may not have permission to alter data in persistentstorage resource 170A-B when the primary controller has the right. Thestatus of storage array controllers 110A-D may change. For example,storage array controller 110A may be designated with secondary status,and storage array controller 110B may be designated with primary status.

In some implementations, a primary controller, such as storage arraycontroller 110A, may serve as the primary controller for one or morestorage arrays 102A-B, and a second controller, such as storage arraycontroller 110B, may serve as the secondary controller for the one ormore storage arrays 102A-B. For example, storage array controller 110Amay be the primary controller for storage array 102A and storage array102B, and storage array controller 110B may be the secondary controllerfor storage array 102A and 102B. In some implementations, storage arraycontrollers 110C and 110D (also referred to as “storage processingmodules”) may neither have primary or secondary status. Storage arraycontrollers 110C and 110D, implemented as storage processing modules,may act as a communication interface between the primary and secondarycontrollers (e.g., storage array controllers 110A and 110B,respectively) and storage array 102B. For example, storage arraycontroller 110A of storage array 102A may send a write request, via SAN158, to storage array 102B. The write request may be received by bothstorage array controllers 110C and 110D of storage array 102B. Storagearray controllers 110C and 110D facilitate the communication, e.g., sendthe write request to the appropriate storage drive 171A-F. It may benoted that in some implementations storage processing modules may beused to increase the number of storage drives controlled by the primaryand secondary controllers.

In implementations, storage array controllers 110A-D are communicativelycoupled, via a midplane (not shown), to one or more storage drives171A-F and to one or more NVRAM devices (not shown) that are included aspart of a storage array 102A-B. The storage array controllers 110A-D maybe coupled to the midplane via one or more data communication links andthe midplane may be coupled to the storage drives 171A-F and the NVRAMdevices via one or more data communications links. The datacommunications links described herein are collectively illustrated bydata communications links 108A-D and may include a Peripheral ComponentInterconnect Express (‘PCIe’) bus, for example.

FIG. 1B illustrates an example system for data storage, in accordancewith some implementations. Storage array controller 101 illustrated inFIG. 1B may be similar to the storage array controllers 110A-D describedwith respect to FIG. 1A. In one example, storage array controller 101may be similar to storage array controller 110A or storage arraycontroller 110B. Storage array controller 101 includes numerous elementsfor purposes of illustration rather than limitation. It may be notedthat storage array controller 101 may include the same, more, or fewerelements configured in the same or different manner in otherimplementations. It may be noted that elements of FIG. 1A may beincluded below to help illustrate features of storage array controller101.

Storage array controller 101 may include one or more processing devices104 and random access memory (RAM′) 111. Processing device 104 (orcontroller 101) represents one or more general-purpose processingdevices such as a microprocessor, central processing unit, or the like.More particularly, the processing device 104 (or controller 101) may bea complex instruction set computing (‘CISC’) microprocessor, reducedinstruction set computing (RISC′) microprocessor, very long instructionword (‘VLIW’) microprocessor, or a processor implementing otherinstruction sets or processors implementing a combination of instructionsets. The processing device 104 (or controller 101) may also be one ormore special-purpose processing devices such as an application specificintegrated circuit (‘ASIC’), a field programmable gate array (‘FPGA’), adigital signal processor (‘DSP’), network processor, or the like.

The processing device 104 may be connected to the RAM 111 via a datacommunications link 106, which may be embodied as a high speed memorybus such as a Double-Data Rate 4 (‘DDR4’) bus. Stored in RAM 111 is anoperating system 112. In some implementations, instructions 113 arestored in RAM 111. Instructions 113 may include computer programinstructions for performing operations in in a direct-mapped flashstorage system. In one embodiment, a direct-mapped flash storage systemis one that that addresses data blocks within flash drives directly andwithout an address translation performed by the storage controllers ofthe flash drives.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 includes one or morehost bus adapters 103A-C that are coupled to the processing device 104via a data communications link 105A-C. In implementations, host busadapters 103A-C may be computer hardware that connects a host system(e.g., the storage array controller) to other network and storagearrays. In some examples, host bus adapters 103A-C may be a FibreChannel adapter that enables the storage array controller 101 to connectto a SAN, an Ethernet adapter that enables the storage array controller101 to connect to a LAN, or the like. Host bus adapters 103A-C may becoupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link105A-C such as, for example, a PCIe bus.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a host busadapter 114 that is coupled to an expander 115. The expander 115 may beused to attach a host system to a larger number of storage drives. Theexpander 115 may, for example, be a SAS expander utilized to enable thehost bus adapter 114 to attach to storage drives in an implementationwhere the host bus adapter 114 is embodied as a SAS controller.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 may include a switch116 coupled to the processing device 104 via a data communications link109. The switch 116 may be a computer hardware device that can createmultiple endpoints out of a single endpoint, thereby enabling multipledevices to share a single endpoint. The switch 116 may, for example, bea PCIe switch that is coupled to a PCIe bus (e.g., data communicationslink 109) and presents multiple PCIe connection points to the midplane.

In implementations, storage array controller 101 includes a datacommunications link 107 for coupling the storage array controller 101 toother storage array controllers. In some examples, data communicationslink 107 may be a QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) interconnect.

A traditional storage system that uses traditional flash drives mayimplement a process across the flash drives that are part of thetraditional storage system. For example, a higher level process of thestorage system may initiate and control a process across the flashdrives. However, a flash drive of the traditional storage system mayinclude its own storage controller that also performs the process. Thus,for the traditional storage system, a higher level process (e.g.,initiated by the storage system) and a lower level process (e.g.,initiated by a storage controller of the storage system) may both beperformed.

To resolve various deficiencies of a traditional storage system,operations may be performed by higher level processes and not by thelower level processes. For example, the flash storage system may includeflash drives that do not include storage controllers that provide theprocess. Thus, the operating system of the flash storage system itselfmay initiate and control the process. This may be accomplished by adirect-mapped flash storage system that addresses data blocks within theflash drives directly and without an address translation performed bythe storage controllers of the flash drives.

The operating system of the flash storage system may identify andmaintain a list of allocation units across multiple flash drives of theflash storage system. The allocation units may be entire erase blocks ormultiple erase blocks. The operating system may maintain a map oraddress range that directly maps addresses to erase blocks of the flashdrives of the flash storage system.

Direct mapping to the erase blocks of the flash drives may be used torewrite data and erase data. For example, the operations may beperformed on one or more allocation units that include a first data anda second data where the first data is to be retained and the second datais no longer being used by the flash storage system. The operatingsystem may initiate the process to write the first data to new locationswithin other allocation units and erasing the second data and markingthe allocation units as being available for use for subsequent data.Thus, the process may only be performed by the higher level operatingsystem of the flash storage system without an additional lower levelprocess being performed by controllers of the flash drives.

Advantages of the process being performed only by the operating systemof the flash storage system include increased reliability of the flashdrives of the flash storage system as unnecessary or redundant writeoperations are not being performed during the process. One possiblepoint of novelty here is the concept of initiating and controlling theprocess at the operating system of the flash storage system. Inaddition, the process can be controlled by the operating system acrossmultiple flash drives. This is contrast to the process being performedby a storage controller of a flash drive.

A storage system can consist of two storage array controllers that sharea set of drives for failover purposes, or it could consist of a singlestorage array controller that provides a storage service that utilizesmultiple drives, or it could consist of a distributed network of storagearray controllers each with some number of drives or some amount ofFlash storage where the storage array controllers in the networkcollaborate to provide a complete storage service and collaborate onvarious aspects of a storage service including storage allocation andgarbage collection.

FIG. 1C illustrates a third example system 117 for data storage inaccordance with some implementations. System 117 (also referred to as“storage system” herein) includes numerous elements for purposes ofillustration rather than limitation. It may be noted that system 117 mayinclude the same, more, or fewer elements configured in the same ordifferent manner in other implementations.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes a dual Peripheral ComponentInterconnect (PCP) flash storage device 118 with separately addressablefast write storage. System 117 may include a storage controller 119. Inone embodiment, storage controller 119A-D may be a CPU, ASIC, FPGA, orany other circuitry that may implement control structures necessaryaccording to the present disclosure. In one embodiment, system 117includes flash memory devices (e.g., including flash memory devices 120a-n), operatively coupled to various channels of the storage devicecontroller 119. Flash memory devices 120 a-n, may be presented to thecontroller 119A-D as an addressable collection of Flash pages, eraseblocks, and/or control elements sufficient to allow the storage devicecontroller 119A-D to program and retrieve various aspects of the Flash.In one embodiment, storage device controller 119A-D may performoperations on flash memory devices 120 a-n including storing andretrieving data content of pages, arranging and erasing any blocks,tracking statistics related to the use and reuse of Flash memory pages,erase blocks, and cells, tracking and predicting error codes and faultswithin the Flash memory, controlling voltage levels associated withprogramming and retrieving contents of Flash cells, etc.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include RAM 121 to store separatelyaddressable fast-write data. In one embodiment, RAM 121 may be one ormore separate discrete devices. In another embodiment, RAM 121 may beintegrated into storage device controller 119A-D or multiple storagedevice controllers. The RAM 121 may be utilized for other purposes aswell, such as temporary program memory for a processing device (e.g., aCPU) in the storage device controller 119.

In one embodiment, system 117 may include a stored energy device 122,such as a rechargeable battery or a capacitor. Stored energy device 122may store energy sufficient to power the storage device controller 119,some amount of the RAM (e.g., RAM 121), and some amount of Flash memory(e.g., Flash memory 120 a-120 n) for sufficient time to write thecontents of RAM to Flash memory. In one embodiment, storage devicecontroller 119A-D may write the contents of RAM to Flash Memory if thestorage device controller detects loss of external power.

In one embodiment, system 117 includes two data communications links 123a, 123 b. In one embodiment, data communications links 123 a, 123 b maybe PCI interfaces. In another embodiment, data communications links 123a, 123 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g.,HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Data communications links 123 a, 123b may be based on non-volatile memory express (‘NVMe’) or NVMe overfabrics (‘NVMf’) specifications that allow external connection to thestorage device controller 119A-D from other components in the storagesystem 117. It should be noted that data communications links may beinterchangeably referred to herein as PCI buses for convenience.

System 117 may also include an external power source (not shown), whichmay be provided over one or both data communications links 123 a, 123 b,or which may be provided separately. An alternative embodiment includesa separate Flash memory (not shown) dedicated for use in storing thecontent of RAM 121. The storage device controller 119A-D may present alogical device over a PCI bus which may include an addressablefast-write logical device, or a distinct part of the logical addressspace of the storage device 118, which may be presented as PCI memory oras persistent storage. In one embodiment, operations to store into thedevice are directed into the RAM 121. On power failure, the storagedevice controller 119A-D may write stored content associated with theaddressable fast-write logical storage to Flash memory (e.g., Flashmemory 120 a-n) for long-term persistent storage.

In one embodiment, the logical device may include some presentation ofsome or all of the content of the Flash memory devices 120 a-n, wherethat presentation allows a storage system including a storage device 118(e.g., storage system 117) to directly address Flash memory pages anddirectly reprogram erase blocks from storage system components that areexternal to the storage device through the PCI bus. The presentation mayalso allow one or more of the external components to control andretrieve other aspects of the Flash memory including some or all of:tracking statistics related to use and reuse of Flash memory pages,erase blocks, and cells across all the Flash memory devices; trackingand predicting error codes and faults within and across the Flash memorydevices; controlling voltage levels associated with programming andretrieving contents of Flash cells; etc.

In one embodiment, the stored energy device 122 may be sufficient toensure completion of in-progress operations to the Flash memory devices120 a-120 n stored energy device 122 may power storage device controller119A-D and associated Flash memory devices (e.g., 120 a-n) for thoseoperations, as well as for the storing of fast-write RAM to Flashmemory. Stored energy device 122 may be used to store accumulatedstatistics and other parameters kept and tracked by the Flash memorydevices 120 a-n and/or the storage device controller 119. Separatecapacitors or stored energy devices (such as smaller capacitors near orembedded within the Flash memory devices themselves) may be used forsome or all of the operations described herein.

Various schemes may be used to track and optimize the life span of thestored energy component, such as adjusting voltage levels over time,partially discharging the storage energy device 122 to measurecorresponding discharge characteristics, etc. If the available energydecreases over time, the effective available capacity of the addressablefast-write storage may be decreased to ensure that it can be writtensafely based on the currently available stored energy.

FIG. 1D illustrates a third example system 124 for data storage inaccordance with some implementations. In one embodiment, system 124includes storage controllers 125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, storagecontrollers 125 a, 125 b are operatively coupled to Dual PCI storagedevices 119 a, 119 b and 119 c, 119 d, respectively. Storage controllers125 a, 125 b may be operatively coupled (e.g., via a storage network130) to some number of host computers 127 a-n.

In one embodiment, two storage controllers (e.g., 125 a and 125 b)provide storage services, such as a SCS) block storage array, a fileserver, an object server, a database or data analytics service, etc. Thestorage controllers 125 a, 125 b may provide services through somenumber of network interfaces (e.g., 126 a-d) to host computers 127 a-noutside of the storage system 124. Storage controllers 125 a, 125 b mayprovide integrated services or an application entirely within thestorage system 124, forming a converged storage and compute system. Thestorage controllers 125 a, 125 b may utilize the fast write memorywithin or across storage devices 119 a-d to journal in progressoperations to ensure the operations are not lost on a power failure,storage controller removal, storage controller or storage systemshutdown, or some fault of one or more software or hardware componentswithin the storage system 124.

In one embodiment, controllers 125 a, 125 b operate as PCI masters toone or the other PCI buses 128 a, 128 b. In another embodiment, 128 aand 128 b may be based on other communications standards (e.g.,HyperTransport, InfiniBand, etc.). Other storage system embodiments mayoperate storage controllers 125 a, 125 b as multi-masters for both PCIbuses 128 a, 128 b. Alternately, a PCI/NVMe/NVMf switchinginfrastructure or fabric may connect multiple storage controllers. Somestorage system embodiments may allow storage devices to communicate witheach other directly rather than communicating only with storagecontrollers. In one embodiment, a storage device controller 119 a may beoperable under direction from a storage controller 125 a to synthesizeand transfer data to be stored into Flash memory devices from data thathas been stored in RAM (e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 1C). For example, arecalculated version of RAM content may be transferred after a storagecontroller has determined that an operation has fully committed acrossthe storage system, or when fast-write memory on the device has reacheda certain used capacity, or after a certain amount of time, to ensureimprove safety of the data or to release addressable fast-write capacityfor reuse. This mechanism may be used, for example, to avoid a secondtransfer over a bus (e.g., 128 a, 128 b) from the storage controllers125 a, 125 b. In one embodiment, a recalculation may include compressingdata, attaching indexing or other metadata, combining multiple datasegments together, performing erasure code calculations, etc.

In one embodiment, under direction from a storage controller 125 a, 125b, a storage device controller 119 a, 119 b may be operable to calculateand transfer data to other storage devices from data stored in RAM(e.g., RAM 121 of FIG. 1C) without involvement of the storagecontrollers 125 a, 125 b. This operation may be used to mirror datastored in one controller 125 a to another controller 125 b, or it couldbe used to offload compression, data aggregation, and/or erasure codingcalculations and transfers to storage devices to reduce load on storagecontrollers or the storage controller interface 129 a, 129 b to the PCIbus 128 a, 128 b.

A storage device controller 119A-D may include mechanisms forimplementing high availability primitives for use by other parts of astorage system external to the Dual PCI storage device 118. For example,reservation or exclusion primitives may be provided so that, in astorage system with two storage controllers providing a highly availablestorage service, one storage controller may prevent the other storagecontroller from accessing or continuing to access the storage device.This could be used, for example, in cases where one controller detectsthat the other controller is not functioning properly or where theinterconnect between the two storage controllers may itself not befunctioning properly.

In one embodiment, a storage system for use with Dual PCI direct mappedstorage devices with separately addressable fast write storage includessystems that manage erase blocks or groups of erase blocks as allocationunits for storing data on behalf of the storage service, or for storingmetadata (e.g., indexes, logs, etc.) associated with the storageservice, or for proper management of the storage system itself. Flashpages, which may be a few kilobytes in size, may be written as dataarrives or as the storage system is to persist data for long intervalsof time (e.g., above a defined threshold of time). To commit data morequickly, or to reduce the number of writes to the Flash memory devices,the storage controllers may first write data into the separatelyaddressable fast write storage on one more storage devices.

In one embodiment, the storage controllers 125 a, 125 b may initiate theuse of erase blocks within and across storage devices (e.g., 118) inaccordance with an age and expected remaining lifespan of the storagedevices, or based on other statistics. The storage controllers 125 a,125 b may initiate garbage collection and data migration data betweenstorage devices in accordance with pages that are no longer needed aswell as to manage Flash page and erase block lifespans and to manageoverall system performance.

In one embodiment, the storage system 124 may utilize mirroring and/orerasure coding schemes as part of storing data into addressable fastwrite storage and/or as part of writing data into allocation unitsassociated with erase blocks. Erasure codes may be used across storagedevices, as well as within erase blocks or allocation units, or withinand across Flash memory devices on a single storage device, to provideredundancy against single or multiple storage device failures or toprotect against internal corruptions of Flash memory pages resultingfrom Flash memory operations or from degradation of Flash memory cells.Mirroring and erasure coding at various levels may be used to recoverfrom multiple types of failures that occur separately or in combination.

The embodiments depicted with reference to FIGS. 2A-G illustrate astorage cluster that stores user data, such as user data originatingfrom one or more user or client systems or other sources external to thestorage cluster. The storage cluster distributes user data acrossstorage nodes housed within a chassis, or across multiple chassis, usingerasure coding and redundant copies of metadata. Erasure coding refersto a method of data protection or reconstruction in which data is storedacross a set of different locations, such as disks, storage nodes orgeographic locations. Flash memory is one type of solid-state memorythat may be integrated with the embodiments, although the embodimentsmay be extended to other types of solid-state memory or other storagemedium, including non-solid state memory. Control of storage locationsand workloads are distributed across the storage locations in aclustered peer-to-peer system. Tasks such as mediating communicationsbetween the various storage nodes, detecting when a storage node hasbecome unavailable, and balancing I/Os (inputs and outputs) across thevarious storage nodes, are all handled on a distributed basis. Data islaid out or distributed across multiple storage nodes in data fragmentsor stripes that support data recovery in some embodiments. Ownership ofdata can be reassigned within a cluster, independent of input and outputpatterns. This architecture described in more detail below allows astorage node in the cluster to fail, with the system remainingoperational, since the data can be reconstructed from other storagenodes and thus remain available for input and output operations. Invarious embodiments, a storage node may be referred to as a clusternode, a blade, or a server.

The storage cluster may be contained within a chassis, i.e., anenclosure housing one or more storage nodes. A mechanism to providepower to each storage node, such as a power distribution bus, and acommunication mechanism, such as a communication bus that enablescommunication between the storage nodes are included within the chassis.The storage cluster can run as an independent system in one locationaccording to some embodiments. In one embodiment, a chassis contains atleast two instances of both the power distribution and the communicationbus which may be enabled or disabled independently. The internalcommunication bus may be an Ethernet bus, however, other technologiessuch as PCIe, InfiniBand, and others, are equally suitable. The chassisprovides a port for an external communication bus for enablingcommunication between multiple chassis, directly or through a switch,and with client systems. The external communication may use a technologysuch as Ethernet, InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, etc. In some embodiments,the external communication bus uses different communication bustechnologies for inter-chassis and client communication. If a switch isdeployed within or between chassis, the switch may act as a translationbetween multiple protocols or technologies. When multiple chassis areconnected to define a storage cluster, the storage cluster may beaccessed by a client using either proprietary interfaces or standardinterfaces such as network file system (‘NFS’), common internet filesystem (‘CIFS’), small computer system interface (‘SCSI’) or hypertexttransfer protocol (‘HTTP’). Translation from the client protocol mayoccur at the switch, chassis external communication bus or within eachstorage node. In some embodiments, multiple chassis may be coupled orconnected to each other through an aggregator switch. A portion and/orall of the coupled or connected chassis may be designated as a storagecluster. As discussed above, each chassis can have multiple blades, eachblade has a media access control (‘MAC’) address, but the storagecluster is presented to an external network as having a single clusterIP address and a single MAC address in some embodiments.

Each storage node may be one or more storage servers and each storageserver is connected to one or more non-volatile solid state memoryunits, which may be referred to as storage units or storage devices. Oneembodiment includes a single storage server in each storage node andbetween one to eight non-volatile solid state memory units, however thisone example is not meant to be limiting. The storage server may includea processor, DRAM and interfaces for the internal communication bus andpower distribution for each of the power buses. Inside the storage node,the interfaces and storage unit share a communication bus, e.g., PCIExpress, in some embodiments. The non-volatile solid state memory unitsmay directly access the internal communication bus interface through astorage node communication bus, or request the storage node to accessthe bus interface. The non-volatile solid state memory unit contains anembedded CPU, solid state storage controller, and a quantity of solidstate mass storage, e.g., between 2-32 terabytes (‘TB’) in someembodiments. An embedded volatile storage medium, such as DRAM, and anenergy reserve apparatus are included in the non-volatile solid statememory unit. In some embodiments, the energy reserve apparatus is acapacitor, super-capacitor, or battery that enables transferring asubset of DRAM contents to a stable storage medium in the case of powerloss. In some embodiments, the non-volatile solid state memory unit isconstructed with a storage class memory, such as phase change ormagnetoresistive random access memory (‘MRAM’) that substitutes for DRAMand enables a reduced power hold-up apparatus.

One of many features of the storage nodes and non-volatile solid statestorage is the ability to proactively rebuild data in a storage cluster.The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage can determinewhen a storage node or non-volatile solid state storage in the storagecluster is unreachable, independent of whether there is an attempt toread data involving that storage node or non-volatile solid statestorage. The storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storage thencooperate to recover and rebuild the data in at least partially newlocations. This constitutes a proactive rebuild, in that the systemrebuilds data without waiting until the data is needed for a read accessinitiated from a client system employing the storage cluster. These andfurther details of the storage memory and operation thereof arediscussed below.

FIG. 2A is a perspective view of a storage cluster 161, with multiplestorage nodes 150 and internal solid-state memory coupled to eachstorage node to provide network attached storage or storage areanetwork, in accordance with some embodiments. A network attachedstorage, storage area network, or a storage cluster, or other storagememory, could include one or more storage clusters 161, each having oneor more storage nodes 150, in a flexible and reconfigurable arrangementof both the physical components and the amount of storage memoryprovided thereby. The storage cluster 161 is designed to fit in a rack,and one or more racks can be set up and populated as desired for thestorage memory. The storage cluster 161 has a chassis 138 havingmultiple slots 142. It should be appreciated that chassis 138 may bereferred to as a housing, enclosure, or rack unit. In one embodiment,the chassis 138 has fourteen slots 142, although other numbers of slotsare readily devised. For example, some embodiments have four slots,eight slots, sixteen slots, thirty-two slots, or other suitable numberof slots. Each slot 142 can accommodate one storage node 150 in someembodiments. Chassis 138 includes flaps 148 that can be utilized tomount the chassis 138 on a rack. Fans 144 provide air circulation forcooling of the storage nodes 150 and components thereof, although othercooling components could be used, or an embodiment could be devisedwithout cooling components. A switch fabric 146 couples storage nodes150 within chassis 138 together and to a network for communication tothe memory. In an embodiment depicted in herein, the slots 142 to theleft of the switch fabric 146 and fans 144 are shown occupied by storagenodes 150, while the slots 142 to the right of the switch fabric 146 andfans 144 are empty and available for insertion of storage node 150 forillustrative purposes. This configuration is one example, and one ormore storage nodes 150 could occupy the slots 142 in various furtherarrangements. The storage node arrangements need not be sequential oradjacent in some embodiments. Storage nodes 150 are hot pluggable,meaning that a storage node 150 can be inserted into a slot 142 in thechassis 138, or removed from a slot 142, without stopping or poweringdown the system. Upon insertion or removal of storage node 150 from slot142, the system automatically reconfigures in order to recognize andadapt to the change. Reconfiguration, in some embodiments, includesrestoring redundancy and/or rebalancing data or load.

Each storage node 150 can have multiple components. In the embodimentshown here, the storage node 150 includes a printed circuit board 159populated by a CPU 156, i.e., processor, a memory 154 coupled to the CPU156, and a non-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the CPU 156,although other mountings and/or components could be used in furtherembodiments. The memory 154 has instructions which are executed by theCPU 156 and/or data operated on by the CPU 156. As further explainedbelow, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 includes flash or, infurther embodiments, other types of solid-state memory.

Referring to FIG. 2A, storage cluster 161 is scalable, meaning thatstorage capacity with non-uniform storage sizes is readily added, asdescribed above. One or more storage nodes 150 can be plugged into orremoved from each chassis and the storage cluster self-configures insome embodiments. Plug-in storage nodes 150, whether installed in achassis as delivered or later added, can have different sizes. Forexample, in one embodiment a storage node 150 can have any multiple of 4TB, e.g., 8 TB, 12 TB, 16 TB, 32 TB, etc. In further embodiments, astorage node 150 could have any multiple of other storage amounts orcapacities. Storage capacity of each storage node 150 is broadcast, andinfluences decisions of how to stripe the data. For maximum storageefficiency, an embodiment can self-configure as wide as possible in thestripe, subject to a predetermined requirement of continued operationwith loss of up to one, or up to two, non-volatile solid state storageunits 152 or storage nodes 150 within the chassis.

FIG. 2B is a block diagram showing a communications interconnect 173 andpower distribution bus 172 coupling multiple storage nodes 150.Referring back to FIG. 2A, the communications interconnect 173 can beincluded in or implemented with the switch fabric 146 in someembodiments. Where multiple storage clusters 161 occupy a rack, thecommunications interconnect 173 can be included in or implemented with atop of rack switch, in some embodiments. As illustrated in FIG. 2B,storage cluster 161 is enclosed within a single chassis 138. Externalport 176 is coupled to storage nodes 150 through communicationsinterconnect 173, while external port 174 is coupled directly to astorage node. External power port 178 is coupled to power distributionbus 172. Storage nodes 150 may include varying amounts and differingcapacities of non-volatile solid state storage 152 as described withreference to FIG. 2A. In addition, one or more storage nodes 150 may bea compute only storage node as illustrated in FIG. 2B. Authorities 168are implemented on the non-volatile solid state storages 152, forexample as lists or other data structures stored in memory. In someembodiments the authorities are stored within the non-volatile solidstate storage 152 and supported by software executing on a controller orother processor of the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In afurther embodiment, authorities 168 are implemented on the storage nodes150, for example as lists or other data structures stored in the memory154 and supported by software executing on the CPU 156 of the storagenode 150. Authorities 168 control how and where data is stored in thenon-volatile solid state storages 152 in some embodiments. This controlassists in determining which type of erasure coding scheme is applied tothe data, and which storage nodes 150 have which portions of the data.Each authority 168 may be assigned to a non-volatile solid state storage152. Each authority may control a range of inode numbers, segmentnumbers, or other data identifiers which are assigned to data by a filesystem, by the storage nodes 150, or by the non-volatile solid statestorage 152, in various embodiments.

Every piece of data, and every piece of metadata, has redundancy in thesystem in some embodiments. In addition, every piece of data and everypiece of metadata has an owner, which may be referred to as anauthority. If that authority is unreachable, for example through failureof a storage node, there is a plan of succession for how to find thatdata or that metadata. In various embodiments, there are redundantcopies of authorities 168. Authorities 168 have a relationship tostorage nodes 150 and non-volatile solid state storage 152 in someembodiments. Each authority 168, covering a range of data segmentnumbers or other identifiers of the data, may be assigned to a specificnon-volatile solid state storage 152. In some embodiments theauthorities 168 for all of such ranges are distributed over thenon-volatile solid state storages 152 of a storage cluster. Each storagenode 150 has a network port that provides access to the non-volatilesolid state storage(s) 152 of that storage node 150. Data can be storedin a segment, which is associated with a segment number and that segmentnumber is an indirection for a configuration of a RAID (redundant arrayof independent disks) stripe in some embodiments. The assignment and useof the authorities 168 thus establishes an indirection to data.Indirection may be referred to as the ability to reference dataindirectly, in this case via an authority 168, in accordance with someembodiments. A segment identifies a set of non-volatile solid statestorage 152 and a local identifier into the set of non-volatile solidstate storage 152 that may contain data. In some embodiments, the localidentifier is an offset into the device and may be reused sequentiallyby multiple segments. In other embodiments the local identifier isunique for a specific segment and never reused. The offsets in thenon-volatile solid state storage 152 are applied to locating data forwriting to or reading from the non-volatile solid state storage 152 (inthe form of a RAID stripe). Data is striped across multiple units ofnon-volatile solid state storage 152, which may include or be differentfrom the non-volatile solid state storage 152 having the authority 168for a particular data segment.

If there is a change in where a particular segment of data is located,e.g., during a data move or a data reconstruction, the authority 168 forthat data segment should be consulted, at that non-volatile solid statestorage 152 or storage node 150 having that authority 168. In order tolocate a particular piece of data, embodiments calculate a hash valuefor a data segment or apply an inode number or a data segment number.The output of this operation points to a non-volatile solid statestorage 152 having the authority 168 for that particular piece of data.In some embodiments there are two stages to this operation. The firststage maps an entity identifier (ID), e.g., a segment number, inodenumber, or directory number to an authority identifier. This mapping mayinclude a calculation such as a hash or a bit mask. The second stage ismapping the authority identifier to a particular non-volatile solidstate storage 152, which may be done through an explicit mapping. Theoperation is repeatable, so that when the calculation is performed, theresult of the calculation repeatably and reliably points to a particularnon-volatile solid state storage 152 having that authority 168. Theoperation may include the set of reachable storage nodes as input. Ifthe set of reachable non-volatile solid state storage units changes theoptimal set changes. In some embodiments, the persisted value is thecurrent assignment (which is always true) and the calculated value isthe target assignment the cluster will attempt to reconfigure towards.This calculation may be used to determine the optimal non-volatile solidstate storage 152 for an authority in the presence of a set ofnon-volatile solid state storage 152 that are reachable and constitutethe same cluster. The calculation also determines an ordered set of peernon-volatile solid state storage 152 that will also record the authorityto non-volatile solid state storage mapping so that the authority may bedetermined even if the assigned non-volatile solid state storage isunreachable. A duplicate or substitute authority 168 may be consulted ifa specific authority 168 is unavailable in some embodiments.

With reference to FIGS. 2A and 2B, two of the many tasks of the CPU 156on a storage node 150 are to break up write data, and reassemble readdata. When the system has determined that data is to be written, theauthority 168 for that data is located as above. When the segment ID fordata is already determined the request to write is forwarded to thenon-volatile solid state storage 152 currently determined to be the hostof the authority 168 determined from the segment. The host CPU 156 ofthe storage node 150, on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152and corresponding authority 168 reside, then breaks up or shards thedata and transmits the data out to various non-volatile solid statestorage 152. The transmitted data is written as a data stripe inaccordance with an erasure coding scheme. In some embodiments, data isrequested to be pulled, and in other embodiments, data is pushed. Inreverse, when data is read, the authority 168 for the segment IDcontaining the data is located as described above. The host CPU 156 ofthe storage node 150 on which the non-volatile solid state storage 152and corresponding authority 168 reside requests the data from thenon-volatile solid state storage and corresponding storage nodes pointedto by the authority. In some embodiments the data is read from flashstorage as a data stripe. The host CPU 156 of storage node 150 thenreassembles the read data, correcting any errors (if present) accordingto the appropriate erasure coding scheme, and forwards the reassembleddata to the network. In further embodiments, some or all of these taskscan be handled in the non-volatile solid state storage 152. In someembodiments, the segment host requests the data be sent to storage node150 by requesting pages from storage and then sending the data to thestorage node making the original request.

In some systems, for example in UNIX-style file systems, data is handledwith an index node or inode, which specifies a data structure thatrepresents an object in a file system. The object could be a file or adirectory, for example. Metadata may accompany the object, as attributessuch as permission data and a creation timestamp, among otherattributes. A segment number could be assigned to all or a portion ofsuch an object in a file system. In other systems, data segments arehandled with a segment number assigned elsewhere. For purposes ofdiscussion, the unit of distribution is an entity, and an entity can bea file, a directory or a segment. That is, entities are units of data ormetadata stored by a storage system. Entities are grouped into setscalled authorities. Each authority has an authority owner, which is astorage node that has the exclusive right to update the entities in theauthority. In other words, a storage node contains the authority, andthat the authority, in turn, contains entities.

A segment is a logical container of data in accordance with someembodiments. A segment is an address space between medium address spaceand physical flash locations, i.e., the data segment number, are in thisaddress space. Segments may also contain meta-data, which enable dataredundancy to be restored (rewritten to different flash locations ordevices) without the involvement of higher level software. In oneembodiment, an internal format of a segment contains client data andmedium mappings to determine the position of that data. Each datasegment is protected, e.g., from memory and other failures, by breakingthe segment into a number of data and parity shards, where applicable.The data and parity shards are distributed, i.e., striped, acrossnon-volatile solid state storage 152 coupled to the host CPUs 156 (SeeFIGS. 2E and 2G) in accordance with an erasure coding scheme. Usage ofthe term segments refers to the container and its place in the addressspace of segments in some embodiments. Usage of the term stripe refersto the same set of shards as a segment and includes how the shards aredistributed along with redundancy or parity information in accordancewith some embodiments.

A series of address-space transformations takes place across an entirestorage system. At the top are the directory entries (file names) whichlink to an inode. Inodes point into medium address space, where data islogically stored. Medium addresses may be mapped through a series ofindirect mediums to spread the load of large files, or implement dataservices like deduplication or snapshots. Medium addresses may be mappedthrough a series of indirect mediums to spread the load of large files,or implement data services like deduplication or snapshots. Segmentaddresses are then translated into physical flash locations. Physicalflash locations have an address range bounded by the amount of flash inthe system in accordance with some embodiments. Medium addresses andsegment addresses are logical containers, and in some embodiments use a128 bit or larger identifier so as to be practically infinite, with alikelihood of reuse calculated as longer than the expected life of thesystem. Addresses from logical containers are allocated in ahierarchical fashion in some embodiments. Initially, each non-volatilesolid state storage unit 152 may be assigned a range of address space.Within this assigned range, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 isable to allocate addresses without synchronization with othernon-volatile solid state storage 152.

Data and metadata is stored by a set of underlying storage layouts thatare optimized for varying workload patterns and storage devices. Theselayouts incorporate multiple redundancy schemes, compression formats andindex algorithms. Some of these layouts store information aboutauthorities and authority masters, while others store file metadata andfile data. The redundancy schemes include error correction codes thattolerate corrupted bits within a single storage device (such as a NANDflash chip), erasure codes that tolerate the failure of multiple storagenodes, and replication schemes that tolerate data center or regionalfailures. In some embodiments, low density parity check (‘LDPC’) code isused within a single storage unit. Reed-Solomon encoding is used withina storage cluster, and mirroring is used within a storage grid in someembodiments. Metadata may be stored using an ordered log structuredindex (such as a Log Structured Merge Tree), and large data may not bestored in a log structured layout.

In order to maintain consistency across multiple copies of an entity,the storage nodes agree implicitly on two things through calculations:(1) the authority that contains the entity, and (2) the storage nodethat contains the authority. The assignment of entities to authoritiescan be done by pseudo randomly assigning entities to authorities, bysplitting entities into ranges based upon an externally produced key, orby placing a single entity into each authority. Examples of pseudorandomschemes are linear hashing and the Replication Under Scalable Hashing(‘RUSH’) family of hashes, including Controlled Replication UnderScalable Hashing (‘CRUSH’). In some embodiments, pseudo-randomassignment is utilized only for assigning authorities to nodes becausethe set of nodes can change. The set of authorities cannot change so anysubjective function may be applied in these embodiments. Some placementschemes automatically place authorities on storage nodes, while otherplacement schemes rely on an explicit mapping of authorities to storagenodes. In some embodiments, a pseudorandom scheme is utilized to mapfrom each authority to a set of candidate authority owners. Apseudorandom data distribution function related to CRUSH may assignauthorities to storage nodes and create a list of where the authoritiesare assigned. Each storage node has a copy of the pseudorandom datadistribution function, and can arrive at the same calculation fordistributing, and later finding or locating an authority. Each of thepseudorandom schemes requires the reachable set of storage nodes asinput in some embodiments in order to conclude the same target nodes.Once an entity has been placed in an authority, the entity may be storedon physical devices so that no expected failure will lead to unexpecteddata loss. In some embodiments, rebalancing algorithms attempt to storethe copies of all entities within an authority in the same layout and onthe same set of machines.

Examples of expected failures include device failures, stolen machines,datacenter fires, and regional disasters, such as nuclear or geologicalevents. Different failures lead to different levels of acceptable dataloss. In some embodiments, a stolen storage node impacts neither thesecurity nor the reliability of the system, while depending on systemconfiguration, a regional event could lead to no loss of data, a fewseconds or minutes of lost updates, or even complete data loss.

In the embodiments, the placement of data for storage redundancy isindependent of the placement of authorities for data consistency. Insome embodiments, storage nodes that contain authorities do not containany persistent storage. Instead, the storage nodes are connected tonon-volatile solid state storage units that do not contain authorities.The communications interconnect between storage nodes and non-volatilesolid state storage units consists of multiple communicationtechnologies and has non-uniform performance and fault tolerancecharacteristics. In some embodiments, as mentioned above, non-volatilesolid state storage units are connected to storage nodes via PCIexpress, storage nodes are connected together within a single chassisusing Ethernet backplane, and chassis are connected together to form astorage cluster. Storage clusters are connected to clients usingEthernet or fiber channel in some embodiments. If multiple storageclusters are configured into a storage grid, the multiple storageclusters are connected using the Internet or other long-distancenetworking links, such as a “metro scale” link or private link that doesnot traverse the internet.

Authority owners have the exclusive right to modify entities, to migrateentities from one non-volatile solid state storage unit to anothernon-volatile solid state storage unit, and to add and remove copies ofentities. This allows for maintaining the redundancy of the underlyingdata. When an authority owner fails, is going to be decommissioned, oris overloaded, the authority is transferred to a new storage node.Transient failures make it non-trivial to ensure that all non-faultymachines agree upon the new authority location. The ambiguity thatarises due to transient failures can be achieved automatically by aconsensus protocol such as Paxos, hot-warm failover schemes, via manualintervention by a remote system administrator, or by a local hardwareadministrator (such as by physically removing the failed machine fromthe cluster, or pressing a button on the failed machine). In someembodiments, a consensus protocol is used, and failover is automatic. Iftoo many failures or replication events occur in too short a timeperiod, the system goes into a self-preservation mode and haltsreplication and data movement activities until an administratorintervenes in accordance with some embodiments.

As authorities are transferred between storage nodes and authorityowners update entities in their authorities, the system transfersmessages between the storage nodes and non-volatile solid state storageunits. With regard to persistent messages, messages that have differentpurposes are of different types. Depending on the type of the message,the system maintains different ordering and durability guarantees. Asthe persistent messages are being processed, the messages aretemporarily stored in multiple durable and non-durable storage hardwaretechnologies. In some embodiments, messages are stored in RAM, NVRAM andon NAND flash devices, and a variety of protocols are used in order tomake efficient use of each storage medium. Latency-sensitive clientrequests may be persisted in replicated NVRAM, and then later NAND,while background rebalancing operations are persisted directly to NAND.

Persistent messages are persistently stored prior to being transmitted.This allows the system to continue to serve client requests despitefailures and component replacement. Although many hardware componentscontain unique identifiers that are visible to system administrators,manufacturer, hardware supply chain and ongoing monitoring qualitycontrol infrastructure, applications running on top of theinfrastructure address virtualize addresses. These virtualized addressesdo not change over the lifetime of the storage system, regardless ofcomponent failures and replacements. This allows each component of thestorage system to be replaced over time without reconfiguration ordisruptions of client request processing, i.e., the system supportsnon-disruptive upgrades.

In some embodiments, the virtualized addresses are stored withsufficient redundancy. A continuous monitoring system correlateshardware and software status and the hardware identifiers. This allowsdetection and prediction of failures due to faulty components andmanufacturing details. The monitoring system also enables the proactivetransfer of authorities and entities away from impacted devices beforefailure occurs by removing the component from the critical path in someembodiments.

FIG. 2C is a multiple level block diagram, showing contents of a storagenode 150 and contents of a non-volatile solid state storage 152 of thestorage node 150. Data is communicated to and from the storage node 150by a network interface controller (‘NIC’) 202 in some embodiments. Eachstorage node 150 has a CPU 156, and one or more non-volatile solid statestorage 152, as discussed above. Moving down one level in FIG. 2C, eachnon-volatile solid state storage 152 has a relatively fast non-volatilesolid state memory, such as nonvolatile random access memory (‘NVRAM’)204, and flash memory 206. In some embodiments, NVRAM 204 may be acomponent that does not require program/erase cycles (DRAM, MRAM, PCM),and can be a memory that can support being written vastly more oftenthan the memory is read from. Moving down another level in FIG. 2C, theNVRAM 204 is implemented in one embodiment as high speed volatilememory, such as dynamic random access memory (DRAM) 216, backed up byenergy reserve 218. Energy reserve 218 provides sufficient electricalpower to keep the DRAM 216 powered long enough for contents to betransferred to the flash memory 206 in the event of power failure. Insome embodiments, energy reserve 218 is a capacitor, super-capacitor,battery, or other device, that supplies a suitable supply of energysufficient to enable the transfer of the contents of DRAM 216 to astable storage medium in the case of power loss. The flash memory 206 isimplemented as multiple flash dies 222, which may be referred to aspackages of flash dies 222 or an array of flash dies 222. It should beappreciated that the flash dies 222 could be packaged in any number ofways, with a single die per package, multiple dies per package (i.e.multichip packages), in hybrid packages, as bare dies on a printedcircuit board or other substrate, as encapsulated dies, etc. In theembodiment shown, the non-volatile solid state storage 152 has acontroller 212 or other processor, and an input output (I/O) port 210coupled to the controller 212. I/O port 210 is coupled to the CPU 156and/or the network interface controller 202 of the flash storage node150. Flash input output (I/O) port 220 is coupled to the flash dies 222,and a direct memory access unit (DMA) 214 is coupled to the controller212, the DRAM 216 and the flash dies 222. In the embodiment shown, theI/O port 210, controller 212, DMA unit 214 and flash I/O port 220 areimplemented on a programmable logic device (‘PLD’) 208, e.g., a fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA). In this embodiment, each flash die 222has pages, organized as sixteen kB (kilobyte) pages 224, and a register226 through which data can be written to or read from the flash die 222.In further embodiments, other types of solid-state memory are used inplace of, or in addition to flash memory illustrated within flash die222.

Storage clusters 161, in various embodiments as disclosed herein, can becontrasted with storage arrays in general. The storage nodes 150 arepart of a collection that creates the storage cluster 161. Each storagenode 150 owns a slice of data and computing required to provide thedata. Multiple storage nodes 150 cooperate to store and retrieve thedata. Storage memory or storage devices, as used in storage arrays ingeneral, are less involved with processing and manipulating the data.Storage memory or storage devices in a storage array receive commands toread, write, or erase data. The storage memory or storage devices in astorage array are not aware of a larger system in which they areembedded, or what the data means. Storage memory or storage devices instorage arrays can include various types of storage memory, such as RAM,solid state drives, hard disk drives, etc. The storage units 152described herein have multiple interfaces active simultaneously andserving multiple purposes. In some embodiments, some of thefunctionality of a storage node 150 is shifted into a storage unit 152,transforming the storage unit 152 into a combination of storage unit 152and storage node 150. Placing computing (relative to storage data) intothe storage unit 152 places this computing closer to the data itself.The various system embodiments have a hierarchy of storage node layerswith different capabilities. By contrast, in a storage array, acontroller owns and knows everything about all of the data that thecontroller manages in a shelf or storage devices. In a storage cluster161, as described herein, multiple controllers in multiple storage units152 and/or storage nodes 150 cooperate in various ways (e.g., forerasure coding, data sharding, metadata communication and redundancy,storage capacity expansion or contraction, data recovery, and so on).

FIG. 2D shows a storage server environment, which uses embodiments ofthe storage nodes 150 and storage units 152 of FIGS. 2A-C. In thisversion, each storage unit 152 has a processor such as controller 212(see FIG. 2C), an FPGA (field programmable gate array), flash memory206, and NVRAM 204 (which is super-capacitor backed DRAM 216, see FIGS.2B and 2C) on a PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) boardin a chassis 138 (see FIG. 2A). The storage unit 152 may be implementedas a single board containing storage, and may be the largest tolerablefailure domain inside the chassis. In some embodiments, up to twostorage units 152 may fail and the device will continue with no dataloss.

The physical storage is divided into named regions based on applicationusage in some embodiments. The NVRAM 204 is a contiguous block ofreserved memory in the storage unit 152 DRAM 216, and is backed by NANDflash. NVRAM 204 is logically divided into multiple memory regionswritten for two as spool (e.g., spool_region). Space within the NVRAM204 spools is managed by each authority 168 independently. Each deviceprovides an amount of storage space to each authority 168. Thatauthority 168 further manages lifetimes and allocations within thatspace. Examples of a spool include distributed transactions or notions.When the primary power to a storage unit 152 fails, onboardsuper-capacitors provide a short duration of power hold up. During thisholdup interval, the contents of the NVRAM 204 are flushed to flashmemory 206. On the next power-on, the contents of the NVRAM 204 arerecovered from the flash memory 206.

As for the storage unit controller, the responsibility of the logical“controller” is distributed across each of the blades containingauthorities 168. This distribution of logical control is shown in FIG.2D as a host controller 242, mid-tier controller 244 and storage unitcontroller(s) 246. Management of the control plane and the storage planeare treated independently, although parts may be physically co-locatedon the same blade. Each authority 168 effectively serves as anindependent controller. Each authority 168 provides its own data andmetadata structures, its own background workers, and maintains its ownlifecycle.

FIG. 2E is a blade 252 hardware block diagram, showing a control plane254, compute and storage planes 256, 258, and authorities 168interacting with underlying physical resources, using embodiments of thestorage nodes 150 and storage units 152 of FIGS. 2A-C in the storageserver environment of FIG. 2D. The control plane 254 is partitioned intoa number of authorities 168 which can use the compute resources in thecompute plane 256 to run on any of the blades 252. The storage plane 258is partitioned into a set of devices, each of which provides access toflash 206 and NVRAM 204 resources. In one embodiment, the compute plane256 may perform the operations of a storage array controller, asdescribed herein, on one or more devices of the storage plane 258 (e.g.,a storage array).

In the compute and storage planes 256, 258 of FIG. 2E, the authorities168 interact with the underlying physical resources (i.e., devices).From the point of view of an authority 168, its resources are stripedover all of the physical devices. From the point of view of a device, itprovides resources to all authorities 168, irrespective of where theauthorities happen to run. Each authority 168 has allocated or has beenallocated one or more partitions 260 of storage memory in the storageunits 152, e.g. partitions 260 in flash memory 206 and NVRAM 204. Eachauthority 168 uses those allocated partitions 260 that belong to it, forwriting or reading user data. Authorities can be associated withdiffering amounts of physical storage of the system. For example, oneauthority 168 could have a larger number of partitions 260 or largersized partitions 260 in one or more storage units 152 than one or moreother authorities 168.

FIG. 2F depicts elasticity software layers in blades 252 of a storagecluster, in accordance with some embodiments. In the elasticitystructure, elasticity software is symmetric, i.e., each blade's computemodule 270 runs the three identical layers of processes depicted in FIG.2F. Storage managers 274 execute read and write requests from otherblades 252 for data and metadata stored in local storage unit 152 NVRAM204 and flash 206. Authorities 168 fulfill client requests by issuingthe necessary reads and writes to the blades 252 on whose storage units152 the corresponding data or metadata resides. Endpoints 272 parseclient connection requests received from switch fabric 146 supervisorysoftware, relay the client connection requests to the authorities 168responsible for fulfillment, and relay the authorities' 168 responses toclients. The symmetric three-layer structure enables the storagesystem's high degree of concurrency. Elasticity scales out efficientlyand reliably in these embodiments. In addition, elasticity implements aunique scale-out technique that balances work evenly across allresources regardless of client access pattern, and maximizes concurrencyby eliminating much of the need for inter-blade coordination thattypically occurs with conventional distributed locking.

Still referring to FIG. 2F, authorities 168 running in the computemodules 270 of a blade 252 perform the internal operations required tofulfill client requests. One feature of elasticity is that authorities168 are stateless, i.e., they cache active data and metadata in theirown blades' 252 DRAMs for fast access, but the authorities store everyupdate in their NVRAM 204 partitions on three separate blades 252 untilthe update has been written to flash 206. All the storage system writesto NVRAM 204 are in triplicate to partitions on three separate blades252 in some embodiments. With triple-mirrored NVRAM 204 and persistentstorage protected by parity and Reed-Solomon RAID checksums, the storagesystem can survive concurrent failure of two blades 252 with no loss ofdata, metadata, or access to either.

Because authorities 168 are stateless, they can migrate between blades252. Each authority 168 has a unique identifier. NVRAM 204 and flash 206partitions are associated with authorities' 168 identifiers, not withthe blades 252 on which they are running in some. Thus, when anauthority 168 migrates, the authority 168 continues to manage the samestorage partitions from its new location. When a new blade 252 isinstalled in an embodiment of the storage cluster, the systemautomatically rebalances load by: partitioning the new blade's 252storage for use by the system's authorities 168, migrating selectedauthorities 168 to the new blade 252, starting endpoints 272 on the newblade 252 and including them in the switch fabric's 146 clientconnection distribution algorithm.

From their new locations, migrated authorities 168 persist the contentsof their NVRAM 204 partitions on flash 206, process read and writerequests from other authorities 168, and fulfill the client requeststhat endpoints 272 direct to them. Similarly, if a blade 252 fails or isremoved, the system redistributes its authorities 168 among the system'sremaining blades 252. The redistributed authorities 168 continue toperform their original functions from their new locations.

FIG. 2G depicts authorities 168 and storage resources in blades 252 of astorage cluster, in accordance with some embodiments. Each authority 168is exclusively responsible for a partition of the flash 206 and NVRAM204 on each blade 252. The authority 168 manages the content andintegrity of its partitions independently of other authorities 168.Authorities 168 compress incoming data and preserve it temporarily intheir NVRAM 204 partitions, and then consolidate, RAID-protect, andpersist the data in segments of the storage in their flash 206partitions. As the authorities 168 write data to flash 206, storagemanagers 274 perform the necessary flash translation to optimize writeperformance and maximize media longevity. In the background, authorities168 “garbage collect,” or reclaim space occupied by data that clientshave made obsolete by overwriting the data. It should be appreciatedthat since authorities' 168 partitions are disjoint, there is no needfor distributed locking to execute client and writes or to performbackground functions.

The embodiments described herein may utilize various software,communication and/or networking protocols. In addition, theconfiguration of the hardware and/or software may be adjusted toaccommodate various protocols. For example, the embodiments may utilizeActive Directory, which is a database based system that providesauthentication, directory, policy, and other services in a WINDOWS™environment. In these embodiments, LDAP (Lightweight Directory AccessProtocol) is one example application protocol for querying and modifyingitems in directory service providers such as Active Directory. In someembodiments, a network lock manager (‘NLM’) is utilized as a facilitythat works in cooperation with the Network File System (‘NFS’) toprovide a System V style of advisory file and record locking over anetwork. The Server Message Block (‘SMB’) protocol, one version of whichis also known as Common Internet File System (‘CIFS’), may be integratedwith the storage systems discussed herein. SMP operates as anapplication-layer network protocol typically used for providing sharedaccess to files, printers, and serial ports and miscellaneouscommunications between nodes on a network. SMB also provides anauthenticated inter-process communication mechanism. AMAZON™ S3 (SimpleStorage Service) is a web service offered by Amazon Web Services, andthe systems described herein may interface with Amazon S3 through webservices interfaces (REST (representational state transfer), SOAP(simple object access protocol), and BitTorrent). A RESTful API(application programming interface) breaks down a transaction to createa series of small modules. Each module addresses a particular underlyingpart of the transaction. The control or permissions provided with theseembodiments, especially for object data, may include utilization of anaccess control list (‘ACL’). The ACL is a list of permissions attachedto an object and the ACL specifies which users or system processes aregranted access to objects, as well as what operations are allowed ongiven objects. The systems may utilize Internet Protocol version 6(‘IPv6’), as well as IPv4, for the communications protocol that providesan identification and location system for computers on networks androutes traffic across the Internet. The routing of packets betweennetworked systems may include Equal-cost multi-path routing (‘ECMP’),which is a routing strategy where next-hop packet forwarding to a singledestination can occur over multiple “best paths” which tie for top placein routing metric calculations. Multi-path routing can be used inconjunction with most routing protocols, because it is a per-hopdecision limited to a single router. The software may supportMulti-tenancy, which is an architecture in which a single instance of asoftware application serves multiple customers. Each customer may bereferred to as a tenant. Tenants may be given the ability to customizesome parts of the application, but may not customize the application'scode, in some embodiments. The embodiments may maintain audit logs. Anaudit log is a document that records an event in a computing system. Inaddition to documenting what resources were accessed, audit log entriestypically include destination and source addresses, a timestamp, anduser login information for compliance with various regulations. Theembodiments may support various key management policies, such asencryption key rotation. In addition, the system may support dynamicroot passwords or some variation dynamically changing passwords.

FIG. 3A sets forth a diagram of a storage system 306 that is coupled fordata communications with a cloud services provider 302 in accordancewith some embodiments of the present disclosure. Although depicted inless detail, the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3A may be similarto the storage systems described above with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D andFIGS. 2A-2G. In some embodiments, the storage system 306 depicted inFIG. 3A may be embodied as a storage system that includes imbalancedactive/active controllers, as a storage system that includes balancedactive/active controllers, as a storage system that includesactive/active controllers where less than all of each controller'sresources are utilized such that each controller has reserve resourcesthat may be used to support failover, as a storage system that includesfully active/active controllers, as a storage system that includesdataset-segregated controllers, as a storage system that includesdual-layer architectures with front-end controllers and back-endintegrated storage controllers, as a storage system that includesscale-out clusters of dual-controller arrays, as well as combinations ofsuch embodiments.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the storage system 306 is coupled tothe cloud services provider 302 via a data communications link 304. Thedata communications link 304 may be embodied as a dedicated datacommunications link, as a data communications pathway that is providedthrough the use of one or data communications networks such as a widearea network (‘WAN’) or local area network (‘LAN’), or as some othermechanism capable of transporting digital information between thestorage system 306 and the cloud services provider 302. Such a datacommunications link 304 may be fully wired, fully wireless, or someaggregation of wired and wireless data communications pathways. In suchan example, digital information may be exchanged between the storagesystem 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the datacommunications link 304 using one or more data communications protocols.For example, digital information may be exchanged between the storagesystem 306 and the cloud services provider 302 via the datacommunications link 304 using the handheld device transfer protocol(‘HDTP’), hypertext transfer protocol (‘HTTP’), internet protocol(‘IP’), real-time transfer protocol (‘RTP’), transmission controlprotocol (‘TCP’), user datagram protocol (‘UDP’), wireless applicationprotocol (‘WAP’), or other protocol.

The cloud services provider 302 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied, forexample, as a system and computing environment that provides services tousers of the cloud services provider 302 through the sharing ofcomputing resources via the data communications link 304. The cloudservices provider 302 may provide on-demand access to a shared pool ofconfigurable computing resources such as computer networks, servers,storage, applications and services, and so on. The shared pool ofconfigurable resources may be rapidly provisioned and released to a userof the cloud services provider 302 with minimal management effort.Generally, the user of the cloud services provider 302 is unaware of theexact computing resources utilized by the cloud services provider 302 toprovide the services. Although in many cases such a cloud servicesprovider 302 may be accessible via the Internet, readers of skill in theart will recognize that any system that abstracts the use of sharedresources to provide services to a user through any data communicationslink may be considered a cloud services provider 302.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 maybe configured to provide a variety of services to the storage system 306and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation ofvarious service models. For example, the cloud services provider 302 maybe configured to provide services to the storage system 306 and users ofthe storage system 306 through the implementation of an infrastructureas a service (‘IaaS’) service model where the cloud services provider302 offers computing infrastructure such as virtual machines and otherresources as a service to subscribers. In addition, the cloud servicesprovider 302 may be configured to provide services to the storage system306 and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation of aplatform as a service (‘PaaS’) service model where the cloud servicesprovider 302 offers a development environment to application developers.Such a development environment may include, for example, an operatingsystem, programming-language execution environment, database, webserver, or other components that may be utilized by applicationdevelopers to develop and run software solutions on a cloud platform.Furthermore, the cloud services provider 302 may be configured toprovide services to the storage system 306 and users of the storagesystem 306 through the implementation of a software as a service(‘SaaS’) service model where the cloud services provider 302 offersapplication software, databases, as well as the platforms that are usedto run the applications to the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306, providing the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306 with on-demand software and eliminating the need toinstall and run the application on local computers, which may simplifymaintenance and support of the application. The cloud services provider302 may be further configured to provide services to the storage system306 and users of the storage system 306 through the implementation of anauthentication as a service (‘AaaS’) service model where the cloudservices provider 302 offers authentication services that can be used tosecure access to applications, data sources, or other resources. Thecloud services provider 302 may also be configured to provide servicesto the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 throughthe implementation of a storage as a service model where the cloudservices provider 302 offers access to its storage infrastructure foruse by the storage system 306 and users of the storage system 306.Readers will appreciate that the cloud services provider 302 may beconfigured to provide additional services to the storage system 306 andusers of the storage system 306 through the implementation of additionalservice models, as the service models described above are included onlyfor explanatory purposes and in no way represent a limitation of theservices that may be offered by the cloud services provider 302 or alimitation as to the service models that may be implemented by the cloudservices provider 302.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, the cloud services provider 302 maybe embodied, for example, as a private cloud, as a public cloud, or as acombination of a private cloud and public cloud. In an embodiment inwhich the cloud services provider 302 is embodied as a private cloud,the cloud services provider 302 may be dedicated to providing servicesto a single organization rather than providing services to multipleorganizations. In an embodiment where the cloud services provider 302 isembodied as a public cloud, the cloud services provider 302 may provideservices to multiple organizations. Public cloud and private clouddeployment models may differ and may come with various advantages anddisadvantages. For example, because a public cloud deployment involvesthe sharing of a computing infrastructure across different organization,such a deployment may not be ideal for organizations with securityconcerns, mission-critical workloads, uptime requirements demands, andso on. While a private cloud deployment can address some of theseissues, a private cloud deployment may require on-premises staff tomanage the private cloud. In still alternative embodiments, the cloudservices provider 302 may be embodied as a mix of a private and publiccloud services with a hybrid cloud deployment.

Although not explicitly depicted in FIG. 3A, readers will appreciatethat additional hardware components and additional software componentsmay be necessary to facilitate the delivery of cloud services to thestorage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. For example, thestorage system 306 may be coupled to (or even include) a cloud storagegateway. Such a cloud storage gateway may be embodied, for example, ashardware-based or software-based appliance that is located on premisewith the storage system 306. Such a cloud storage gateway may operate asa bridge between local applications that are executing on the storagearray 306 and remote, cloud-based storage that is utilized by thestorage array 306. Through the use of a cloud storage gateway,organizations may move primary iSCSI or NAS to the cloud servicesprovider 302, thereby enabling the organization to save space on theiron-premises storage systems. Such a cloud storage gateway may beconfigured to emulate a disk array, a block-based device, a file server,or other storage system that can translate the SCSI commands, fileserver commands, or other appropriate command into REST-space protocolsthat facilitate communications with the cloud services provider 302.

In order to enable the storage system 306 and users of the storagesystem 306 to make use of the services provided by the cloud servicesprovider 302, a cloud migration process may take place during whichdata, applications, or other elements from an organization's localsystems (or even from another cloud computing environment) are moved tothe cloud services provider 302. In order to successfully migrate data,applications, or other elements to the cloud services provider's 302environment, middleware such as a cloud migration tool may be utilizedto bridge gaps between the cloud services provider's 302 environment andan organization's environment. Such cloud migration tools may also beconfigured to address potentially high network costs and long transfertimes associated with migrating large volumes of data to the cloudservices provider 302, as well as addressing security concernsassociated with sensitive data to the cloud services provider 302 overdata communications networks. In order to further enable the storagesystem 306 and users of the storage system 306 to make use of theservices provided by the cloud services provider 302, a cloudorchestrator may also be used to arrange and coordinate automated tasksin pursuit of creating a consolidated process or workflow. Such a cloudorchestrator may perform tasks such as configuring various components,whether those components are cloud components or on-premises components,as well as managing the interconnections between such components. Thecloud orchestrator can simplify the inter-component communication andconnections to ensure that links are correctly configured andmaintained.

In the example depicted in FIG. 3A, and as described briefly above, thecloud services provider 302 may be configured to provide services to thestorage system 306 and users of the storage system 306 through the usageof a SaaS service model where the cloud services provider 302 offersapplication software, databases, as well as the platforms that are usedto run the applications to the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306, providing the storage system 306 and users of thestorage system 306 with on-demand software and eliminating the need toinstall and run the application on local computers, which may simplifymaintenance and support of the application. Such applications may takemany forms in accordance with various embodiments of the presentdisclosure. For example, the cloud services provider 302 may beconfigured to provide access to data analytics applications to thestorage system 306 and users of the storage system 306. Such dataanalytics applications may be configured, for example, to receivetelemetry data phoned home by the storage system 306. Such telemetrydata may describe various operating characteristics of the storagesystem 306 and may be analyzed, for example, to determine the health ofthe storage system 306, to identify workloads that are executing on thestorage system 306, to predict when the storage system 306 will run outof various resources, to recommend configuration changes, hardware orsoftware upgrades, workflow migrations, or other actions that mayimprove the operation of the storage system 306.

The cloud services provider 302 may also be configured to provide accessto virtualized computing environments to the storage system 306 andusers of the storage system 306. Such virtualized computing environmentsmay be embodied, for example, as a virtual machine or other virtualizedcomputer hardware platforms, virtual storage devices, virtualizedcomputer network resources, and so on. Examples of such virtualizedenvironments can include virtual machines that are created to emulate anactual computer, virtualized desktop environments that separate alogical desktop from a physical machine, virtualized file systems thatallow uniform access to different types of concrete file systems, andmany others.

For further explanation, FIG. 3B sets forth a diagram of a storagesystem 306 in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. Although depicted in less detail, the storage system 306depicted in FIG. 3B may be similar to the storage systems describedabove with reference to FIGS. 1A-1D and FIGS. 2A-2G as the storagesystem may include many of the components described above.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may include storage resources308, which may be embodied in many forms. For example, in someembodiments the storage resources 308 can include nano-RAM or anotherform of nonvolatile random access memory that utilizes carbon nanotubesdeposited on a substrate. In some embodiments, the storage resources 308may include 3D crosspoint non-volatile memory in which bit storage isbased on a change of bulk resistance, in conjunction with a stackablecross-gridded data access array. In some embodiments, the storageresources 308 may include flash memory, including single-level cell(‘SLC’) NAND flash, multi-level cell (‘MLC’) NAND flash, triple-levelcell (‘TLC’) NAND flash, quad-level cell (‘QLC’) NAND flash, and others.In some embodiments, the storage resources 308 may include non-volatilemagnetoresistive random-access memory (‘MRAM’), including spin transfertorque (‘STT’) MRAM, in which data is stored through the use of magneticstorage elements. In some embodiments, the example storage resources 308may include non-volatile phase-change memory (‘PCM’) that may have theability to hold multiple bits in a single cell as cells can achieve anumber of distinct intermediary states. In some embodiments, the storageresources 308 may include quantum memory that allows for the storage andretrieval of photonic quantum information. In some embodiments, theexample storage resources 308 may include resistive random-access memory(‘ReRAM’) in which data is stored by changing the resistance across adielectric solid-state material. In some embodiments, the storageresources 308 may include storage class memory (‘SCM’) in whichsolid-state nonvolatile memory may be manufactured at a high densityusing some combination of sub-lithographic patterning techniques,multiple bits per cell, multiple layers of devices, and so on. Readerswill appreciate that other forms of computer memories and storagedevices may be utilized by the storage systems described above,including DRAM, SRAM, EEPROM, universal memory, and many others. Thestorage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3A may be embodied in a varietyof form factors, including but not limited to, dual in-line memorymodules (‘DIMMs’), non-volatile dual in-line memory modules (‘NVDIMMs’),M.2, U.2, and others.

The storage resources 308 depicted in FIG. 3A may include various formsof storage-class memory (′ SCM′). SCM may effectively treat fast,non-volatile memory (e.g., NAND flash) as an extension of DRAM such thatan entire dataset may be treated as an in-memory dataset that residesentirely in DRAM. SCM may include non-volatile media such as, forexample, NAND flash. Such NAND flash may be accessed utilizing NVMe thatcan use the PCIe bus as its transport, providing for relatively lowaccess latencies compared to older protocols. In fact, the networkprotocols used for SSDs in all-flash arrays can include NVMe usingEthernet (ROCE, NVME TCP), Fibre Channel (NVMe FC), InfiniBand (iWARP),and others that make it possible to treat fast, non-volatile memory asan extension of DRAM. In view of the fact that DRAM is oftenbyte-addressable and fast, non-volatile memory such as NAND flash isblock-addressable, a controller software/hardware stack may be needed toconvert the block data to the bytes that are stored in the media.Examples of media and software that may be used as SCM can include, forexample, 3D XPoint, Intel Memory Drive Technology, Samsung's Z-SSD, andothers.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may implement avariety of storage architectures. For example, storage systems inaccordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure may utilizeblock storage where data is stored in blocks, and each block essentiallyacts as an individual hard drive. Storage systems in accordance withsome embodiments of the present disclosure may utilize object storage,where data is managed as objects. Each object may include the dataitself, a variable amount of metadata, and a globally unique identifier,where object storage can be implemented at multiple levels (e.g., devicelevel, system level, interface level). Storage systems in accordancewith some embodiments of the present disclosure utilize file storage inwhich data is stored in a hierarchical structure. Such data may be savedin files and folders, and presented to both the system storing it andthe system retrieving it in the same format.

The example storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B may be embodied as astorage system in which additional storage resources can be addedthrough the use of a scale-up model, additional storage resources can beadded through the use of a scale-out model, or through some combinationthereof. In a scale-up model, additional storage may be added by addingadditional storage devices. In a scale-out model, however, additionalstorage nodes may be added to a cluster of storage nodes, where suchstorage nodes can include additional processing resources, additionalnetworking resources, and so on.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes communicationsresources 310 that may be useful in facilitating data communicationsbetween components within the storage system 306, as well as datacommunications between the storage system 306 and computing devices thatare outside of the storage system 306. The communications resources 310may be configured to utilize a variety of different protocols and datacommunication fabrics to facilitate data communications betweencomponents within the storage systems as well as computing devices thatare outside of the storage system. For example, the communicationsresources 310 can include fibre channel (‘FC’) technologies such as FCfabrics and FC protocols that can transport SCSI commands over FCnetworks. The communications resources 310 can also include FC overethernet (‘FCoE’) technologies through which FC frames are encapsulatedand transmitted over Ethernet networks. The communications resources 310can also include InfiniBand (‘IB’) technologies in which a switchedfabric topology is utilized to facilitate transmissions between channeladapters. The communications resources 310 can also include NVM Express(‘NVMe’) technologies and NVMe over fabrics (‘NVMeoF’) technologiesthrough which non-volatile storage media attached via a PCI express(‘PCIe’) bus may be accessed. The communications resources 310 can alsoinclude mechanisms for accessing storage resources 308 within thestorage system 306 utilizing serial attached SCSI (‘SAS’), serial ATA(‘SATA’) bus interfaces for connecting storage resources 308 within thestorage system 306 to host bus adapters within the storage system 306,internet small computer systems interface (‘iSCSI’) technologies toprovide block-level access to storage resources 308 within the storagesystem 306, and other communications resources that that may be usefulin facilitating data communications between components within thestorage system 306, as well as data communications between the storagesystem 306 and computing devices that are outside of the storage system306.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes processingresources 312 that may be useful in useful in executing computer programinstructions and performing other computational tasks within the storagesystem 306. The processing resources 312 may include one or moreapplication-specific integrated circuits (‘ASICs’) that are customizedfor some particular purpose as well as one or more central processingunits (‘CPUs’). The processing resources 312 may also include one ormore digital signal processors (‘DSPs’), one or more field-programmablegate arrays (‘FPGAs’), one or more systems on a chip (‘SoCs’), or otherform of processing resources 312. The storage system 306 may utilize thestorage resources 312 to perform a variety of tasks including, but notlimited to, supporting the execution of software resources 314 that willbe described in greater detail below.

The storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3B also includes softwareresources 314 that, when executed by processing resources 312 within thestorage system 306, may perform various tasks. The software resources314 may include, for example, one or more modules of computer programinstructions that when executed by processing resources 312 within thestorage system 306 are useful in carrying out various data protectiontechniques to preserve the integrity of data that is stored within thestorage systems. Readers will appreciate that such data protectiontechniques may be carried out, for example, by system software executingon computer hardware within the storage system, by a cloud servicesprovider, or in other ways. Such data protection techniques can include,for example, data archiving techniques that cause data that is no longeractively used to be moved to a separate storage device or separatestorage system for long-term retention, data backup techniques throughwhich data stored in the storage system may be copied and stored in adistinct location to avoid data loss in the event of equipment failureor some other form of catastrophe with the storage system, datareplication techniques through which data stored in the storage systemis replicated to another storage system such that the data may beaccessible via multiple storage systems, data snapshotting techniquesthrough which the state of data within the storage system is captured atvarious points in time, data and database cloning techniques throughwhich duplicate copies of data and databases may be created, and otherdata protection techniques. Through the use of such data protectiontechniques, business continuity and disaster recovery objectives may bemet as a failure of the storage system may not result in the loss ofdata stored in the storage system.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful inimplementing software-defined storage (‘SDS’). In such an example, thesoftware resources 314 may include one or more modules of computerprogram instructions that, when executed, are useful in policy-basedprovisioning and management of data storage that is independent of theunderlying hardware. Such software resources 314 may be useful inimplementing storage virtualization to separate the storage hardwarefrom the software that manages the storage hardware.

The software resources 314 may also include software that is useful infacilitating and optimizing I/O operations that are directed to thestorage resources 308 in the storage system 306. For example, thesoftware resources 314 may include software modules that perform carryout various data reduction techniques such as, for example, datacompression, data deduplication, and others. The software resources 314may include software modules that intelligently group together I/Ooperations to facilitate better usage of the underlying storage resource308, software modules that perform data migration operations to migratefrom within a storage system, as well as software modules that performother functions. Such software resources 314 may be embodied as one ormore software containers or in many other ways.

Readers will appreciate that the presence of such software resources 314may provide for an improved user experience of the storage system 306,an expansion of functionality supported by the storage system 306, andmany other benefits. Consider the specific example of the softwareresources 314 carrying out data backup techniques through which datastored in the storage system may be copied and stored in a distinctlocation to avoid data loss in the event of equipment failure or someother form of catastrophe. In such an example, the systems describedherein may more reliably (and with less burden placed on the user)perform backup operations relative to interactive backup managementsystems that require high degrees of user interactivity, offer lessrobust automation and feature sets, and so on.

The storage systems described above may carry out intelligent databackup techniques through which data stored in the storage system may becopied and stored in a distinct location to avoid data loss in the eventof equipment failure or some other form of catastrophe. For example, thestorage systems described above may be configured to examine each backupto avoid restoring the storage system to an undesirable state. Consideran example in which malware infects the storage system. In such anexample, the storage system may include software resources 314 that canscan each backup to identify backups that were captured before themalware infected the storage system and those backups that were capturedafter the malware infected the storage system. In such an example, thestorage system may restore itself from a backup that does not includethe malware—or at least not restore the portions of a backup thatcontained the malware. In such an example, the storage system mayinclude software resources 314 that can scan each backup to identify thepresences of malware (or a virus, or some other undesirable), forexample, by identifying write operations that were serviced by thestorage system and originated from a network subnet that is suspected tohave delivered the malware, by identifying write operations that wereserviced by the storage system and originated from a user that issuspected to have delivered the malware, by identifying write operationsthat were serviced by the storage system and examining the content ofthe write operation against fingerprints of the malware, and in manyother ways.

Readers will further appreciate that the backups (often in the form ofone or more snapshots) may also be utilized to perform rapid recovery ofthe storage system. Consider an example in which the storage system isinfected with ransomware that locks users out of the storage system. Insuch an example, software resources 314 within the storage system may beconfigured to detect the presence of ransomware and may be furtherconfigured to restore the storage system to a point-in-time, using theretained backups, prior to the point-in-time at which the ransomwareinfected the storage system. In such an example, the presence ofransomware may be explicitly detected through the use of software toolsutilized by the system, through the use of a key (e.g., a USB drive)that is inserted into the storage system, or in a similar way. Likewise,the presence of ransomware may be inferred in response to systemactivity meeting a predetermined fingerprint such as, for example, noreads or writes coming into the system for a predetermined period oftime.

Readers will appreciate that the various components depicted in FIG. 3Bmay be grouped into one or more optimized computing packages asconverged infrastructures. Such converged infrastructures may includepools of computers, storage and networking resources that can be sharedby multiple applications and managed in a collective manner usingpolicy-driven processes. Such converged infrastructures may minimizecompatibility issues between various components within the storagesystem 306 while also reducing various costs associated with theestablishment and operation of the storage system 306. Such convergedinfrastructures may be implemented with a converged infrastructurereference architecture, with standalone appliances, with a softwaredriven hyper-converged approach (e.g., hyper-converged infrastructures),or in other ways.

Readers will appreciate that the storage system 306 depicted in FIG. 3Bmay be useful for supporting various types of software applications. Forexample, the storage system 306 may be useful in supporting artificialintelligence (‘AI’) applications, database applications, DevOpsprojects, electronic design automation tools, event-driven softwareapplications, high performance computing applications, simulationapplications, high-speed data capture and analysis applications, machinelearning applications, media production applications, media servingapplications, picture archiving and communication systems (‘PACS’)applications, software development applications, virtual realityapplications, augmented reality applications, and many other types ofapplications by providing storage resources to such applications.

The storage systems described above may operate to support a widevariety of applications. In view of the fact that the storage systemsinclude compute resources, storage resources, and a wide variety ofother resources, the storage systems may be well suited to supportapplications that are resource intensive such as, for example, AIapplications. Such AI applications may enable devices to perceive theirenvironment and take actions that maximize their chance of success atsome goal. Examples of such AI applications can include IBM Watson,Microsoft Oxford, Google DeepMind, Baidu Minwa, and others. The storagesystems described above may also be well suited to support other typesof applications that are resource intensive such as, for example,machine learning applications. Machine learning applications may performvarious types of data analysis to automate analytical model building.Using algorithms that iteratively learn from data, machine learningapplications can enable computers to learn without being explicitlyprogrammed. One particular area of machine learning is referred to asreinforcement learning, which involves taking suitable actions tomaximize reward in a particular situation. Reinforcement learning may beemployed to find the best possible behavior or path that a particularsoftware application or machine should take in a specific situation.Reinforcement learning differs from other areas of machine learning(e.g., supervised learning, unsupervised learning) in that correctinput/output pairs need not be presented for reinforcement learning andsub-optimal actions need not be explicitly corrected.

In addition to the resources already described, the storage systemsdescribed above may also include graphics processing units (‘GPUs’),occasionally referred to as visual processing unit (‘VPUs’). Such GPUsmay be embodied as specialized electronic circuits that rapidlymanipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in aframe buffer intended for output to a display device. Such GPUs may beincluded within any of the computing devices that are part of thestorage systems described above, including as one of many individuallyscalable components of a storage system, where other examples ofindividually scalable components of such storage system can includestorage components, memory components, compute components (e.g., CPUs,FPGAs, ASICs), networking components, software components, and others.In addition to GPUs, the storage systems described above may alsoinclude neural network processors (‘NNPs’) for use in various aspects ofneural network processing. Such NNPs may be used in place of (or inaddition to) GPUs and may also be independently scalable.

As described above, the storage systems described herein may beconfigured to support artificial intelligence applications, machinelearning applications, big data analytics applications, and many othertypes of applications. The rapid growth in these sort of applications isbeing driven by three technologies: deep learning (DL), GPU processors,and Big Data. Deep learning is a computing model that makes use ofmassively parallel neural networks inspired by the human brain. Insteadof experts handcrafting software, a deep learning model writes its ownsoftware by learning from lots of examples. A GPU is a modern processorwith thousands of cores, well-suited to run algorithms that looselyrepresent the parallel nature of the human brain.

Advances in deep neural networks have ignited a new wave of algorithmsand tools for data scientists to tap into their data with artificialintelligence (AI). With improved algorithms, larger data sets, andvarious frameworks (including open-source software libraries for machinelearning across a range of tasks), data scientists are tackling new usecases like autonomous driving vehicles, natural language processing andunderstanding, computer vision, machine reasoning, strong AI, and manyothers. Applications of such techniques may include: machine andvehicular object detection, identification and avoidance; visualrecognition, classification and tagging; algorithmic financial tradingstrategy performance management; simultaneous localization and mapping;predictive maintenance of high-value machinery; prevention against cybersecurity threats, expertise automation; image recognition andclassification; question answering; robotics; text analytics(extraction, classification) and text generation and translation; andmany others. Applications of AI techniques has materialized in a widearray of products include, for example, Amazon Echo's speech recognitiontechnology that allows users to talk to their machines, GoogleTranslate™ which allows for machine-based language translation,Spotify's Discover Weekly that provides recommendations on new songs andartists that a user may like based on the user's usage and trafficanalysis, Quill's text generation offering that takes structured dataand turns it into narrative stories, Chatbots that provide real-time,contextually specific answers to questions in a dialog format, and manyothers. Furthermore, AI may impact a wide variety of industries andsectors. For example, AI solutions may be used in healthcare to takeclinical notes, patient files, research data, and other inputs togenerate potential treatment options for doctors to explore. Likewise,AI solutions may be used by retailers to personalize consumerrecommendations based on a person's digital footprint of behaviors,profile data, or other data.

Training deep neural networks, however, requires both high quality inputdata and large amounts of computation. GPUs are massively parallelprocessors capable of operating on large amounts of data simultaneously.When combined into a multi-GPU cluster, a high throughput pipeline maybe required to feed input data from storage to the compute engines. Deeplearning is more than just constructing and training models. There alsoexists an entire data pipeline that must be designed for the scale,iteration, and experimentation necessary for a data science team tosucceed.

Data is the heart of modern AI and deep learning algorithms. Beforetraining can begin, one problem that must be addressed revolves aroundcollecting the labeled data that is crucial for training an accurate AImodel. A full scale AI deployment may be required to continuouslycollect, clean, transform, label, and store large amounts of data.Adding additional high quality data points directly translates to moreaccurate models and better insights. Data samples may undergo a seriesof processing steps including, but not limited to: 1) ingesting the datafrom an external source into the training system and storing the data inraw form, 2) cleaning and transforming the data in a format convenientfor training, including linking data samples to the appropriate label,3) exploring parameters and models, quickly testing with a smallerdataset, and iterating to converge on the most promising models to pushinto the production cluster, 4) executing training phases to selectrandom batches of input data, including both new and older samples, andfeeding those into production GPU servers for computation to updatemodel parameters, and 5) evaluating including using a holdback portionof the data not used in training in order to evaluate model accuracy onthe holdout data. This lifecycle may apply for any type of parallelizedmachine learning, not just neural networks or deep learning. Forexample, standard machine learning frameworks may rely on CPUs insteadof GPUs but the data ingest and training workflows may be the same.Readers will appreciate that a single shared storage data hub creates acoordination point throughout the lifecycle without the need for extradata copies among the ingest, preprocessing, and training stages. Rarelyis the ingested data used for only one purpose, and shared storage givesthe flexibility to train multiple different models or apply traditionalanalytics to the data.

Readers will appreciate that each stage in the AI data pipeline may havevarying requirements from the data hub (e.g., the storage system orcollection of storage systems). Scale-out storage systems must deliveruncompromising performance for all manner of access types andpatterns—from small, metadata-heavy to large files, from random tosequential access patterns, and from low to high concurrency. Thestorage systems described above may serve as an ideal AI data hub as thesystems may service unstructured workloads. In the first stage, data isideally ingested and stored on to the same data hub that followingstages will use, in order to avoid excess data copying. The next twosteps can be done on a standard compute server that optionally includesa GPU, and then in the fourth and last stage, full training productionjobs are run on powerful GPU-accelerated servers. Often, there is aproduction pipeline alongside an experimental pipeline operating on thesame dataset. Further, the GPU-accelerated servers can be usedindependently for different models or joined together to train on onelarger model, even spanning multiple systems for distributed training.If the shared storage tier is slow, then data must be copied to localstorage for each phase, resulting in wasted time staging data ontodifferent servers. The ideal data hub for the AI training pipelinedelivers performance similar to data stored locally on the server nodewhile also having the simplicity and performance to enable all pipelinestages to operate concurrently.

A data scientist works to improve the usefulness of the trained modelthrough a wide variety of approaches: more data, better data, smartertraining, and deeper models. In many cases, there will be teams of datascientists sharing the same datasets and working in parallel to producenew and improved training models. Often, there is a team of datascientists working within these phases concurrently on the same shareddatasets. Multiple, concurrent workloads of data processing,experimentation, and full-scale training layer the demands of multipleaccess patterns on the storage tier. In other words, storage cannot justsatisfy large file reads, but must contend with a mix of large and smallfile reads and writes. Finally, with multiple data scientists exploringdatasets and models, it may be critical to store data in its nativeformat to provide flexibility for each user to transform, clean, and usethe data in a unique way. The storage systems described above mayprovide a natural shared storage home for the dataset, with dataprotection redundancy (e.g., by using RAID6) and the performancenecessary to be a common access point for multiple developers andmultiple experiments. Using the storage systems described above mayavoid the need to carefully copy subsets of the data for local work,saving both engineering and GPU-accelerated servers use time. Thesecopies become a constant and growing tax as the raw data set and desiredtransformations constantly update and change.

Readers will appreciate that a fundamental reason why deep learning hasseen a surge in success is the continued improvement of models withlarger data set sizes. In contrast, classical machine learningalgorithms, like logistic regression, stop improving in accuracy atsmaller data set sizes. As such, the separation of compute resources andstorage resources may also allow independent scaling of each tier,avoiding many of the complexities inherent in managing both together. Asthe data set size grows or new data sets are considered, a scale outstorage system must be able to expand easily. Similarly, if moreconcurrent training is required, additional GPUs or other computeresources can be added without concern for their internal storage.Furthermore, the storage systems described above may make building,operating, and growing an AI system easier due to the random readbandwidth provided by the storage systems, the ability to of the storagesystems to randomly read small files (50 KB) high rates (meaning that noextra effort is required to aggregate individual data points to makelarger, storage-friendly files), the ability of the storage systems toscale capacity and performance as either the dataset grows or thethroughput requirements grow, the ability of the storage systems tosupport files or objects, the ability of the storage systems to tuneperformance for large or small files (i.e., no need for the user toprovision filesystems), the ability of the storage systems to supportnon-disruptive upgrades of hardware and software even during productionmodel training, and for many other reasons.

Small file performance of the storage tier may be critical as many typesof inputs, including text, audio, or images will be natively stored assmall files. If the storage tier does not handle small files well, anextra step will be required to pre-process and group samples into largerfiles. Storage, built on top of spinning disks, that relies on SSD as acaching tier, may fall short of the performance needed. Because trainingwith random input batches results in more accurate models, the entiredata set must be accessible with full performance. SSD caches onlyprovide high performance for a small subset of the data and will beineffective at hiding the latency of spinning drives.

Although the preceding paragraphs discuss deep learning applications,readers will appreciate that the storage systems described herein mayalso be part of a distributed deep learning (‘DDL’) platform to supportthe execution of DDL algorithms. Distributed deep learning may can beused to significantly accelerate deep learning with distributedcomputing on GPUs (or other form of accelerator or computer programinstruction executor), such that parallelism can be achieved. Inaddition, the output of training machine learning and deep learningmodels, such as a fully trained machine learning model, may be used fora variety of purposes and in conjunction with other tools. For example,trained machine learning models may be used in conjunction with toolslike Core ML to integrate a broad variety of machine learning modeltypes into an application. In fact, trained models may be run throughCore ML converter tools and inserted into a custom application that canbe deployed on compatible devices. The storage systems described abovemay also be paired with other technologies such as TensorFlow, anopen-source software library for dataflow programming across a range oftasks that may be used for machine learning applications such as neuralnetworks, to facilitate the development of such machine learning models,applications, and so on.

Readers will further appreciate that the systems described above may bedeployed in a variety of ways to support the democratization of AI, asAI becomes more available for mass consumption. The democratization ofAI may include, for example, the ability to offer AI as aPlatform-as-a-Service, the growth of Artificial general intelligenceofferings, the proliferation of Autonomous level 4 and Autonomous level5 vehicles, the availability of autonomous mobile robots, thedevelopment of conversational AI platforms, and many others. Forexample, the systems described above may be deployed in cloud computingenvironments, edge environments, or other environments that are usefulin supporting the democratization of AI. As part of the democratizationof AI, a movement may occur from narrow AI that consists of highlyscoped machine learning solutions that target a particular task toartificial general intelligence where the use of machine learning isexpanded to handle a broad range of use cases that could essentiallyperform any intelligent task that a human could perform and could learndynamically, much like a human.

The storage systems described above may also be used in a neuromorphiccomputing environment. Neuromorphic computing is a form of computingthat mimics brain cells. To support neuromorphic computing, anarchitecture of interconnected “neurons” replace traditional computingmodels with low-powered signals that go directly between neurons formore efficient computation. Neuromorphic computing may make use ofvery-large-scale integration (VLSI) systems containing electronic analogcircuits to mimic neuro-biological architectures present in the nervoussystem, as well as analog, digital, mixed-mode analog/digital VLSI, andsoftware systems that implement models of neural systems for perception,motor control, or multisensory integration.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above may beconfigured to support the storage or use of (among other types of data)blockchains. Such blockchains may be embodied as a continuously growinglist of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured usingcryptography. Each block in a blockchain may contain a hash pointer as alink to a previous block, a timestamp, transaction data, and so on.Blockchains may be designed to be resistant to modification of the dataand can serve as an open, distributed ledger that can recordtransactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable andpermanent way. This makes blockchains potentially suitable for therecording of events, medical records, and other records managementactivities, such as identity management, transaction processing, andothers. In addition to supporting the storage and use of blockchaintechnologies, the storage systems described above may also support thestorage and use of derivative items such as, for example, open sourceblockchains and related tools that are part of the IBM′ Hyperledgerproject, permissioned blockchains in which a certain number of trustedparties are allowed to access the block chain, blockchain products thatenable developers to build their own distributed ledger projects, andothers. Readers will appreciate that blockchain technologies may impacta wide variety of industries and sectors. For example, blockchaintechnologies may be used in real estate transactions as blockchain basedcontracts whose use can eliminate the need for 3^(rd) parties and enableself-executing actions when conditions are met. Likewise, universalhealth records can be created by aggregating and placing a person'shealth history onto a blockchain ledger for any healthcare provider, orpermissioned health care providers, to access and update.

Readers will appreciate that the usage of blockchains is not limited tofinancial transactions, contracts, and the like. In fact, blockchainsmay be leveraged to enable the decentralized aggregation, ordering,timestamping and archiving of any type of information, includingstructured data, correspondence, documentation, or other data. Throughthe usage of blockchains, participants can provably and permanentlyagree on exactly what data was entered, when and by whom, withoutrelying on a trusted intermediary. For example, SAP's recently launchedblockchain platform, which supports MultiChain and Hyperledger Fabric,targets a broad range of supply chain and other non-financialapplications.

One way to use a blockchain for recording data is to embed each piece ofdata directly inside a transaction. Every blockchain transaction may bedigitally signed by one or more parties, replicated to a plurality ofnodes, ordered and timestamped by the chain's consensus algorithm, andstored permanently in a tamper-proof way. Any data within thetransaction will therefore be stored identically but independently byevery node, along with a proof of who wrote it and when. The chain'susers are able to retrieve this information at any future time. Thistype of storage may be referred to as on-chain storage. On-chain storagemay not be particularly practical, however, when attempting to store avery large dataset. As such, in accordance with embodiments of thepresent disclosure, blockchains and the storage systems described hereinmay be leveraged to support on-chain storage of data as well asoff-chain storage of data.

Off-chain storage of data can be implemented in a variety of ways andcan occur when the data itself is not stored within the blockchain. Forexample, in one embodiment, a hash function may be utilized and the dataitself may be fed into the hash function to generate a hash value. Insuch an example, the hashes of large pieces of data may be embeddedwithin transactions, instead of the data itself. Each hash may serve asa commitment to its input data, with the data itself being storedoutside of the blockchain. Readers will appreciate that any blockchainparticipant that needs an off-chain piece of data cannot reproduce thedata from its hash, but if the data can be retrieved in some other way,then the on-chain hash serves to confirm who created it and when. Justlike regular on-chain data, the hash may be embedded inside a digitallysigned transaction, which was included in the chain by consensus.

Readers will appreciate that, in other embodiments, alternatives toblockchains may be used to facilitate the decentralized storage ofinformation. For example, one alternative to a blockchain that may beused is a blockweave. While conventional blockchains store everytransaction to achieve validation, a blockweave permits securedecentralization without the usage of the entire chain, thereby enablinglow cost on-chain storage of data. Such blockweaves may utilize aconsensus mechanism that is based on proof of access (PoA) and proof ofwork (PoW). While typical PoW systems only depend on the previous blockin order to generate each successive block, the PoA algorithm mayincorporate data from a randomly chosen previous block. Combined withthe blockweave data structure, miners do not need to store all blocks(forming a blockchain), but rather can store any previous blocks forminga weave of blocks (a blockweave). This enables increased levels ofscalability, speed and low-cost and reduces the cost of data storage inpart because miners need not store all blocks, thereby resulting in asubstantial reduction in the amount of electricity that is consumedduring the mining process because, as the network expands, electricityconsumption decreases because a blockweave demands less and less hashingpower for consensus as data is added to the system. Furthermore,blockweaves may be deployed on a decentralized storage network in whichincentives are created to encourage rapid data sharing. Suchdecentralized storage networks may also make use of blockshadowingtechniques, where nodes only send a minimal block “shadow” to othernodes that allows peers to reconstruct a full block, instead oftransmitting the full block itself.

The storage systems described above may, either alone or in combinationwith other computing devices, be used to support in-memory computingapplications. In memory computing involves the storage of information inRAM that is distributed across a cluster of computers. In-memorycomputing helps business customers, including retailers, banks andutilities, to quickly detect patterns, analyze massive data volumes onthe fly, and perform their operations quickly. Readers will appreciatethat the storage systems described above, especially those that areconfigurable with customizable amounts of processing resources, storageresources, and memory resources (e.g., those systems in which bladesthat contain configurable amounts of each type of resource), may beconfigured in a way so as to provide an infrastructure that can supportin-memory computing. Likewise, the storage systems described above mayinclude component parts (e.g., NVDIMMs, 3D crosspoint storage thatprovide fast random access memory that is persistent) that can actuallyprovide for an improved in-memory computing environment as compared toin-memory computing environments that rely on RAM distributed acrossdedicated servers.

In some embodiments, the storage systems described above may beconfigured to operate as a hybrid in-memory computing environment thatincludes a universal interface to all storage media (e.g., RAM, flashstorage, 3D crosspoint storage). In such embodiments, users may have noknowledge regarding the details of where their data is stored but theycan still use the same full, unified API to address data. In suchembodiments, the storage system may (in the background) move data to thefastest layer available—including intelligently placing the data independence upon various characteristics of the data or in dependenceupon some other heuristic. In such an example, the storage systems mayeven make use of existing products such as Apache Ignite and GridGain tomove data between the various storage layers, or the storage systems maymake use of custom software to move data between the various storagelayers. The storage systems described herein may implement variousoptimizations to improve the performance of in-memory computing such as,for example, having computations occur as close to the data as possible.

Readers will further appreciate that in some embodiments, the storagesystems described above may be paired with other resources to supportthe applications described above. For example, one infrastructure couldinclude primary compute in the form of servers and workstations whichspecialize in using General-purpose computing on graphics processingunits (‘GPGPU’) to accelerate deep learning applications that areinterconnected into a computation engine to train parameters for deepneural networks. Each system may have Ethernet external connectivity,InfiniBand external connectivity, some other form of externalconnectivity, or some combination thereof. In such an example, the GPUscan be grouped for a single large training or used independently totrain multiple models. The infrastructure could also include a storagesystem such as those described above to provide, for example, ascale-out all-flash file or object store through which data can beaccessed via high-performance protocols such as NFS, S3, and so on. Theinfrastructure can also include, for example, redundant top-of-rackEthernet switches connected to storage and compute via ports in MLAGport channels for redundancy. The infrastructure could also includeadditional compute in the form of whitebox servers, optionally withGPUs, for data ingestion, pre-processing, and model debugging. Readerswill appreciate that additional infrastructures are also be possible.

Readers will appreciate that the systems described above may be bettersuited for the applications described above relative to other systemsthat may include, for example, a distributed direct-attached storage(DDAS) solution deployed in server nodes. Such DDAS solutions may bebuilt for handling large, less sequential accesses but may be less ableto handle small, random accesses. Readers will further appreciate thatthe storage systems described above may be utilized to provide aplatform for the applications described above that is preferable to theutilization of cloud-based resources as the storage systems may beincluded in an on-site or in-house infrastructure that is more secure,more locally and internally managed, more robust in feature sets andperformance, or otherwise preferable to the utilization of cloud-basedresources as part of a platform to support the applications describedabove. For example, services built on platforms such as IBM's Watson mayrequire a business enterprise to distribute individual user information,such as financial transaction information or identifiable patientrecords, to other institutions. As such, cloud-based offerings of AI asa service may be less desirable than internally managed and offered AIas a service that is supported by storage systems such as the storagesystems described above, for a wide array of technical reasons as wellas for various business reasons.

Readers will appreciate that the storage systems described above, eitheralone or in coordination with other computing machinery may beconfigured to support other AI related tools. For example, the storagesystems may make use of tools like ONXX or other open neural networkexchange formats that make it easier to transfer models written indifferent AI frameworks. Likewise, the storage systems may be configuredto support tools like Amazon's Gluon that allow developers to prototype,build, and train deep learning models. In fact, the storage systemsdescribed above may be part of a larger platform, such as IBM′ CloudPrivate for Data, that includes integrated data science, dataengineering and application building services. Such platforms mayseamlessly collect, organize, secure, and analyze data across anenterprise, as well as simplify hybrid data management, unified datagovernance and integration, data science and business analytics with asingle solution.

Readers will further appreciate that the storage systems described abovemay also be deployed as an edge solution. Such an edge solution may bein place to optimize cloud computing systems by performing dataprocessing at the edge of the network, near the source of the data. Edgecomputing can push applications, data and computing power (i.e.,services) away from centralized points to the logical extremes of anetwork. Through the use of edge solutions such as the storage systemsdescribed above, computational tasks may be performed using the computeresources provided by such storage systems, data may be storage usingthe storage resources of the storage system, and cloud-based servicesmay be accessed through the use of various resources of the storagesystem (including networking resources). By performing computationaltasks on the edge solution, storing data on the edge solution, andgenerally making use of the edge solution, the consumption of expensivecloud-based resources may be avoided and, in fact, performanceimprovements may be experienced relative to a heavier reliance oncloud-based resources.

While many tasks may benefit from the utilization of an edge solution,some particular uses may be especially suited for deployment in such anenvironment. For example, devices like drones, autonomous cars, robots,and others may require extremely rapid processing—so fast, in fact, thatsending data up to a cloud computing environment and back to receivedata processing support may simply be too slow. Likewise, machines likelocomotives and gas turbines that generate large amounts of informationthrough the use of a wide array of data-generating sensors may benefitfrom the rapid data processing capabilities of an edge solution. As anadditional example, some IoT devices such as connected video cameras maynot be well-suited for the utilization of cloud-based resources as itmay be impractical (not only from a privacy perspective, securityperspective, or a financial perspective) to send the data to the cloudsimply because of the pure volume of data that is involved. As such,many tasks that really on data processing, storage, or communicationsmay be better suited by platforms that include edge solutions such asthe storage systems described above.

Consider a specific example of inventory management in a warehouse,distribution center, or similar location. A large inventory,warehousing, shipping, order-fulfillment, manufacturing or otheroperation has a large amount of inventory on inventory shelves, and highresolution digital cameras that produce a firehose of large data. All ofthis data may be taken into an image processing system, which may reducethe amount of data to a firehose of small data. All of the small datamay be stored on-premises in storage. The on-premises storage, at theedge of the facility, may be coupled to the cloud, for external reports,real-time control and cloud storage. Inventory management may beperformed with the results of the image processing, so that inventorycan be tracked on the shelves and restocked, moved, shipped, modifiedwith new products, or discontinued/obsolescent products deleted, etc.The above scenario is a prime candidate for an embodiment of theconfigurable processing and storage systems described above. Acombination of compute-only blades and offload blades suited for theimage processing, perhaps with deep learning on offload-FPGA oroffload-custom blade(s) could take in the firehose of large data fromall of the digital cameras, and produce the firehose of small data. Allof the small data could then be stored by storage nodes, operating withstorage units in whichever combination of types of storage blades besthandles the data flow. This is an example of storage and functionacceleration and integration. Depending on external communication needswith the cloud, and external processing in the cloud, and depending onreliability of network connections and cloud resources, the system couldbe sized for storage and compute management with bursty workloads andvariable conductivity reliability. Also, depending on other inventorymanagement aspects, the system could be configured for scheduling andresource management in a hybrid edge/cloud computing environment.

The storage systems described above may alone, or in combination withother computing resources, serves as a network edge platform thatcombines compute resources, storage resources, networking resources,cloud technologies and network virtualization technologies, and so on.As part of the network, the edge may take on characteristics similar toother network facilities, from the customer premise and backhaulaggregation facilities to Points of Presence (PoPs) and regional datacenters. Readers will appreciate that network workloads, such as VirtualNetwork Functions (VNFs) and others, will reside on the network edgeplatform. Enabled by a combination of containers and virtual machines,the network edge platform may rely on controllers and schedulers thatare no longer geographically co-located with the data processingresources. The functions, as microservices, may split into controlplanes, user and data planes, or even state machines, allowing forindependent optimization and scaling techniques to be applied. Such userand data planes may be enabled through increased accelerators, boththose residing in server platforms, such as FPGAs and Smart NICs, andthrough SDN-enabled merchant silicon and programmable ASICs.

The storage systems described above may also be optimized for use in bigdata analytics. Big data analytics may be generally described as theprocess of examining large and varied data sets to uncover hiddenpatterns, unknown correlations, market trends, customer preferences andother useful information that can help organizations make more-informedbusiness decisions. Big data analytics applications enable datascientists, predictive modelers, statisticians and other analyticsprofessionals to analyze growing volumes of structured transaction data,plus other forms of data that are often left untapped by conventionalbusiness intelligence (BI) and analytics programs. As part of thatprocess, semi-structured and unstructured data such as, for example,internet clickstream data, web server logs, social media content, textfrom customer emails and survey responses, mobile-phone call-detailrecords, IoT sensor data, and other data may be converted to astructured form. Big data analytics is a form of advanced analytics,which involves complex applications with elements such as predictivemodels, statistical algorithms and what-if analyses powered byhigh-performance analytics systems.

The storage systems described above may also support (includingimplementing as a system interface) applications that perform tasks inresponse to human speech. For example, the storage systems may supportthe execution intelligent personal assistant applications such as, forexample, Amazon's Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Voice, Samsung Bixby,Microsoft Cortana, and others. While the examples described in theprevious sentence make use of voice as input, the storage systemsdescribed above may also support chatbots, talkbots, chatterbots, orartificial conversational entities or other applications that areconfigured to conduct a conversation via auditory or textual methods.Likewise, the storage system may actually execute such an application toenable a user such as a system administrator to interact with thestorage system via speech. Such applications are generally capable ofvoice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms,streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic,and other real time information, such as news, although in embodimentsin accordance with the present disclosure, such applications may beutilized as interfaces to various system management operations.

The storage systems described above may also implement AI platforms fordelivering on the vision of self-driving storage. Such AI platforms maybe configured to deliver global predictive intelligence by collectingand analyzing large amounts of storage system telemetry data points toenable effortless management, analytics and support. In fact, suchstorage systems may be capable of predicting both capacity andperformance, as well as generating intelligent advice on workloaddeployment, interaction and optimization. Such AI platforms may beconfigured to scan all incoming storage system telemetry data against alibrary of issue fingerprints to predict and resolve incidents inreal-time, before they impact customer environments, and captureshundreds of variables related to performance that are used to forecastperformance load.

The storage systems described above may support the serialized orsimultaneous execution artificial intelligence applications, machinelearning applications, data analytics applications, datatransformations, and other tasks that collectively may form an AIladder. Such an AI ladder may effectively be formed by combining suchelements to form a complete data science pipeline, where existdependencies between elements of the AI ladder. For example, AI mayrequire that some form of machine learning has taken place, machinelearning may require that some form of analytics has taken place,analytics may require that some form of data and informationarchitecting has taken place, and so on. As such, each element may beviewed as a rung in an AI ladder that collectively can form a completeand sophisticated AI solution.

The storage systems described above may also, either alone or incombination with other computing environments, be used to deliver an AIeverywhere experience where AI permeates wide and expansive aspects ofbusiness and life. For example, AI may play an important role in thedelivery of deep learning solutions, deep reinforcement learningsolutions, artificial general intelligence solutions, autonomousvehicles, cognitive computing solutions, commercial UAVs or drones,conversational user interfaces, enterprise taxonomies, ontologymanagement solutions, machine learning solutions, smart dust, smartrobots, smart workplaces, and many others. The storage systems describedabove may also, either alone or in combination with other computingenvironments, be used to deliver a wide range of transparently immersiveexperiences where technology can introduce transparency between people,businesses, and things. Such transparently immersive experiences may bedelivered as augmented reality technologies, connected homes, virtualreality technologies, brain-computer interfaces, human augmentationtechnologies, nanotube electronics, volumetric displays, 4D printingtechnologies, or others. The storage systems described above may also,either alone or in combination with other computing environments, beused to support a wide variety of digital platforms. Such digitalplatforms can include, for example, 5G wireless systems and platforms,digital twin platforms, edge computing platforms, IoT platforms, quantumcomputing platforms, serverless PaaS, software-defined security,neuromorphic computing platforms, and so on.

Readers will appreciate that some transparently immersive experiencesmay involve the use of digital twins of various “things” such as people,places, processes, systems, and so on. Such digital twins and otherimmersive technologies can alter the way that humans interact withtechnology, as conversational platforms, augmented reality, virtualreality and mixed reality provide a more natural and immersiveinteraction with the digital world. In fact, digital twins may be linkedwith the real-world, perhaps even in real-time, to understand the stateof a thing or system, respond to changes, and so on. Because digitaltwins consolidate massive amounts of information on individual assetsand groups of assets (even possibly providing control of those assets),digital twins may communicate with each other to digital factory modelsof multiple linked digital twins.

The storage systems described above may also be part of a multi-cloudenvironment in which multiple cloud computing and storage services aredeployed in a single heterogeneous architecture. In order to facilitatethe operation of such a multi-cloud environment, DevOps tools may bedeployed to enable orchestration across clouds. Likewise, continuousdevelopment and continuous integration tools may be deployed tostandardize processes around continuous integration and delivery, newfeature rollout and provisioning cloud workloads. By standardizing theseprocesses, a multi-cloud strategy may be implemented that enables theutilization of the best provider for each workload. Furthermore,application monitoring and visibility tools may be deployed to moveapplication workloads around different clouds, identify performanceissues, and perform other tasks. In addition, security and compliancetools may be deployed for to ensure compliance with securityrequirements, government regulations, and so on. Such a multi-cloudenvironment may also include tools for application delivery and smartworkload management to ensure efficient application delivery and helpdirect workloads across the distributed and heterogeneousinfrastructure, as well as tools that ease the deployment andmaintenance of packaged and custom applications in the cloud and enableportability amongst clouds. The multi-cloud environment may similarlyinclude tools for data portability.

The storage systems described above may be used as a part of a platformto enable the use of crypto-anchors that may be used to authenticate aproduct's origins and contents to ensure that it matches a blockchainrecord associated with the product. Such crypto-anchors may take manyforms including, for example, as edible ink, as a mobile sensor, as amicrochip, and others. Similarly, as part of a suite of tools to securedata stored on the storage system, the storage systems described abovemay implement various encryption technologies and schemes, includinglattice cryptography. Lattice cryptography can involve constructions ofcryptographic primitives that involve lattices, either in theconstruction itself or in the security proof. Unlike public-key schemessuch as the RSA, Diffie-Hellman or Elliptic-Curve cryptosystems, whichare easily attacked by a quantum computer, some lattice-basedconstructions appear to be resistant to attack by both classical andquantum computers.

A quantum computer is a device that performs quantum computing. Quantumcomputing is computing using quantum-mechanical phenomena, such assuperposition and entanglement. Quantum computers differ fromtraditional computers that are based on transistors, as such traditionalcomputers require that data be encoded into binary digits (bits), eachof which is always in one of two definite states (0 or 1). In contrastto traditional computers, quantum computers use quantum bits, which canbe in superpositions of states. A quantum computer maintains a sequenceof qubits, where a single qubit can represent a one, a zero, or anyquantum superposition of those two qubit states. A pair of qubits can bein any quantum superposition of 4 states, and three qubits in anysuperposition of 8 states. A quantum computer with n qubits cangenerally be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2{circumflex over( )}n different states simultaneously, whereas a traditional computercan only be in one of these states at any one time. A quantum Turingmachine is a theoretical model of such a computer.

The storage systems described above may also be paired withFPGA-accelerated servers as part of a larger AI or ML infrastructure.Such FPGA-accelerated servers may reside near (e.g., in the same datacenter) the storage systems described above or even incorporated into anappliance that includes one or more storage systems, one or moreFPGA-accelerated servers, networking infrastructure that supportscommunications between the one or more storage systems and the one ormore FPGA-accelerated servers, as well as other hardware and softwarecomponents. Alternatively, FPGA-accelerated servers may reside within acloud computing environment that may be used to perform compute-relatedtasks for AI and ML jobs. Any of the embodiments described above may beused to collectively serve as a FPGA-based AI or ML platform. Readerswill appreciate that, in some embodiments of the FPGA-based AI or MLplatform, the FPGAs that are contained within the FPGA-acceleratedservers may be reconfigured for different types of ML models (e.g.,LSTMs, CNNs, GRUs). The ability to reconfigure the FPGAs that arecontained within the FPGA-accelerated servers may enable theacceleration of a ML or AI application based on the most optimalnumerical precision and memory model being used. Readers will appreciatethat by treating the collection of FPGA-accelerated servers as a pool ofFPGAs, any CPU in the data center may utilize the pool of FPGAs as ashared hardware microservice, rather than limiting a server to dedicatedaccelerators plugged into it.

The FPGA-accelerated servers and the GPU-accelerated servers describedabove may implement a model of computing where, rather than keeping asmall amount of data in a CPU and running a long stream of instructionsover it as occurred in more traditional computing models, the machinelearning model and parameters are pinned into the high-bandwidth on-chipmemory with lots of data streaming though the high-bandwidth on-chipmemory. FPGAs may even be more efficient than GPUs for this computingmodel, as the FPGAs can be programmed with only the instructions neededto run this kind of computing model.

The storage systems described above may be configured to provideparallel storage, for example, through the use of a parallel file systemsuch as BeeGFS. Such parallel files systems may include a distributedmetadata architecture. For example, the parallel file system may includea plurality of metadata servers across which metadata is distributed, aswell as components that include services for clients and storageservers. Through the use of a parallel file system, file contents may bedistributed over a plurality of storage servers using striping andmetadata may be distributed over a plurality of metadata servers on adirectory level, with each server storing a part of the complete filesystem tree. Readers will appreciate that in some embodiments, thestorage servers and metadata servers may run in userspace on top of anexisting local file system. Furthermore, dedicated hardware is notrequired for client services, the metadata servers, or the hardwareservers as metadata servers, storage servers, and even the clientservices may be run on the same machines.

Readers will appreciate that, in part due to the emergence of many ofthe technologies discussed above including mobile devices, cloudservices, social networks, big data analytics, and so on, an informationtechnology platform may be needed to integrate all of these technologiesand drive new business opportunities by quickly deliveringrevenue-generating products, services, and experiences—rather thanmerely providing the technology to automate internal business processes.Information technology organizations may need to balance resources andinvestments needed to keep core legacy systems up and running while alsointegrating technologies to build an information technology platformthat can provide the speed and flexibility in areas such as, forexample, exploiting big data, managing unstructured data, and workingwith cloud applications and services. One possible embodiment of such aninformation technology platform is a composable infrastructure thatincludes fluid resource pools, such as many of the systems describedabove that, can meet the changing needs of applications by allowing forthe composition and recomposition of blocks of disaggregated compute,storage, and fabric infrastructure. Such a composable infrastructure canalso include a single management interface to eliminate complexity and aunified API to discover, search, inventory, configure, provision,update, and diagnose the composable infrastructure.

The systems described above can support the execution of a wide array ofsoftware applications. Such software applications can be deployed in avariety of ways, including container-based deployment models.Containerized applications may be managed using a variety of tools. Forexample, containerized applications may be managed using Docker Swarm, aclustering and scheduling tool for Docker containers that enables ITadministrators and developers to establish and manage a cluster ofDocker nodes as a single virtual system. Likewise, containerizedapplications may be managed through the use of Kubernetes, acontainer-orchestration system for automating deployment, scaling andmanagement of containerized applications. Kubernetes may execute on topof operating systems such as, for example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux,Ubuntu Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers, and others. In suchexamples, a master node may assign tasks to worker/minion nodes.Kubernetes can include a set of components (e.g., kubelet, kube-proxy,cAdvisor) that manage individual nodes as a well as a set of components(e.g., etcd, API server, Scheduler, Control Manager) that form a controlplane. Various controllers (e.g., Replication Controller, DaemonSetController) can drive the state of a Kubernetes cluster by managing aset of pods that includes one or more containers that are deployed on asingle node. Containerized applications may be used to facilitate aserverless, cloud native computing deployment and management model forsoftware applications. In support of a serverless, cloud nativecomputing deployment and management model for software applications,containers may be used as part of an event handling mechanisms (e.g.,AWS Lambdas) such that various events cause a containerized applicationto be spun up to operate as an event handler.

The systems described above may be deployed in a variety of ways,including being deployed in ways that support fifth generation (‘5G’)networks. 5G networks may support substantially faster datacommunications than previous generations of mobile communicationsnetworks and, as a consequence may lead to the disaggregation of dataand computing resources as modern massive data centers may become lessprominent and may be replaced, for example, by more-local, micro datacenters that are close to the mobile-network towers. The systemsdescribed above may be included in such local, micro data centers andmay be part of or paired to multi-access edge computing (‘MEC’) systems.Such MEC systems may enable cloud computing capabilities and an ITservice environment at the edge of the cellular network. By runningapplications and performing related processing tasks closer to thecellular customer, network congestion may be reduced and applicationsmay perform better. MEC technology is designed to be implemented at thecellular base stations or other edge nodes, and enables flexible andrapid deployment of new applications and services for customers. MEC mayalso allow cellular operators to open their radio access network (‘RAN’)to authorized third-parties, such as application developers and contentprovider. Furthermore, edge computing and micro data centers maysubstantially reduce the cost of smartphones that work with the 5Gnetwork because customer may not need devices with such intensiveprocessing power and the expensive requisite components.

Readers will appreciate that 5G networks may generate more data thanprevious network generations, especially in view of the fact that thehigh network bandwidth offered by 5G networks may cause the 5G networksto handle amounts and types of data (e.g., sensor data from self-drivingcars, data generated by AR/VR technologies) that weren't as feasible forprevious generation networks. In such examples, the scalability offeredby the systems described above may be very valuable as the amount ofdata increases, adoption of emerging technologies increase, and so on.

For further explanation, FIG. 3C illustrates an exemplary computingdevice 350 that may be specifically configured to perform one or more ofthe processes described herein. As shown in FIG. 3C, computing device350 may include a communication interface 352, a processor 354, astorage device 356, and an input/output (“I/O”) module 358communicatively connected one to another via a communicationinfrastructure 360. While an exemplary computing device 350 is shown inFIG. 3C, the components illustrated in FIG. 3C are not intended to belimiting. Additional or alternative components may be used in otherembodiments. Components of computing device 350 shown in FIG. 3C willnow be described in additional detail.

Communication interface 352 may be configured to communicate with one ormore computing devices. Examples of communication interface 352 include,without limitation, a wired network interface (such as a networkinterface card), a wireless network interface (such as a wirelessnetwork interface card), a modem, an audio/video connection, and anyother suitable interface.

Processor 354 generally represents any type or form of processing unitcapable of processing data and/or interpreting, executing, and/ordirecting execution of one or more of the instructions, processes,and/or operations described herein. Processor 354 may perform operationsby executing computer-executable instructions 362 (e.g., an application,software, code, and/or other executable data instance) stored in storagedevice 356.

Storage device 356 may include one or more data storage media, devices,or configurations and may employ any type, form, and combination of datastorage media and/or device. For example, storage device 356 mayinclude, but is not limited to, any combination of the non-volatilemedia and/or volatile media described herein. Electronic data, includingdata described herein, may be temporarily and/or permanently stored instorage device 356. For example, data representative ofcomputer-executable instructions 362 configured to direct processor 354to perform any of the operations described herein may be stored withinstorage device 356. In some examples, data may be arranged in one ormore databases residing within storage device 356.

I/O module 358 may include one or more I/O modules configured to receiveuser input and provide user output. I/O module 358 may include anyhardware, firmware, software, or combination thereof supportive of inputand output capabilities. For example, I/O module 358 may includehardware and/or software for capturing user input, including, but notlimited to, a keyboard or keypad, a touchscreen component (e.g.,touchscreen display), a receiver (e.g., an RF or infrared receiver),motion sensors, and/or one or more input buttons.

I/O module 358 may include one or more devices for presenting output toa user, including, but not limited to, a graphics engine, a display(e.g., a display screen), one or more output drivers (e.g., displaydrivers), one or more audio speakers, and one or more audio drivers. Incertain embodiments, I/O module 358 is configured to provide graphicaldata to a display for presentation to a user. The graphical data may berepresentative of one or more graphical user interfaces and/or any othergraphical content as may serve a particular implementation. In someexamples, any of the systems, computing devices, and/or other componentsdescribed herein may be implemented by computing device 350.

For further explanation, FIG. 4 sets forth an example of a cloud-basedstorage system (403) in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. In the example depicted in FIG. 4 , the cloud-based storagesystem (403) is created entirely in a cloud computing environment (402)such as, for example, Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’), Microsoft Azure,Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and others. Thecloud-based storage system (403) may be used to provide services similarto the services that may be provided by the storage systems describedabove. For example, the cloud-based storage system (403) may be used toprovide block storage services to users of the cloud-based storagesystem (403), the cloud-based storage system (403) may be used toprovide storage services to users of the cloud-based storage system(403) through the use of solid-state storage, and so on.

The cloud-based storage system (403) depicted in FIG. 4 includes twocloud computing instances (404, 406) that each are used to support theexecution of a storage controller application (408, 410). The cloudcomputing instances (404, 406) may be embodied, for example, asinstances of cloud computing resources (e.g., virtual machines) that maybe provided by the cloud computing environment (402) to support theexecution of software applications such as the storage controllerapplication (408, 410). In one embodiment, the cloud computing instances(404, 406) may be embodied as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (‘EC2’)instances. In such an example, an Amazon Machine Image (‘AMP’) thatincludes the storage controller application (408, 410) may be booted tocreate and configure a virtual machine that may execute the storagecontroller application (408, 410).

In the example method depicted in FIG. 4 , the storage controllerapplication (408, 410) may be embodied as a module of computer programinstructions that, when executed, carries out various storage tasks. Forexample, the storage controller application (408, 410) may be embodiedas a module of computer program instructions that, when executed,carries out the same tasks as the controllers (110A, 110B in FIG. 1A)described above such as writing data received from the users of thecloud-based storage system (403) to the cloud-based storage system(403), erasing data from the cloud-based storage system (403),retrieving data from the cloud-based storage system (403) and providingsuch data to users of the cloud-based storage system (403), monitoringand reporting of disk utilization and performance, performing redundancyoperations, such as Redundant Array of Independent Drives (‘RAID’) orRAID-like data redundancy operations, compressing data, encrypting data,deduplicating data, and so forth. Readers will appreciate that becausethere are two cloud computing instances (404, 406) that each include thestorage controller application (408, 410), in some embodiments one cloudcomputing instance (404) may operate as the primary controller asdescribed above while the other cloud computing instance (406) mayoperate as the secondary controller as described above. In such anexample, in order to save costs, the cloud computing instance (404) thatoperates as the primary controller may be deployed on a relativelyhigh-performance and relatively expensive cloud computing instance whilethe cloud computing instance (406) that operates as the secondarycontroller may be deployed on a relatively low-performance andrelatively inexpensive cloud computing instance. Readers will appreciatethat the storage controller application (408, 410) depicted in FIG. 4may include identical source code that is executed within differentcloud computing instances (404, 406).

Consider an example in which the cloud computing environment (402) isembodied as AWS and the cloud computing instances are embodied as EC2instances. In such an example, AWS offers many types of EC2 instances.For example, AWS offers a suite of general purpose EC2 instances thatinclude varying levels of memory and processing power. In such anexample, the cloud computing instance (404) that operates as the primarycontroller may be deployed on one of the instance types that has arelatively large amount of memory and processing power while the cloudcomputing instance (406) that operates as the secondary controller maybe deployed on one of the instance types that has a relatively smallamount of memory and processing power. In such an example, upon theoccurrence of a failover event where the roles of primary and secondaryare switched, a double failover may actually be carried out suchthat: 1) a first failover event where the cloud computing instance (406)that formerly operated as the secondary controller begins to operate asthe primary controller, and 2) a third cloud computing instance (notshown) that is of an instance type that has a relatively large amount ofmemory and processing power is spun up with a copy of the storagecontroller application, where the third cloud computing instance beginsoperating as the primary controller while the cloud computing instance(406) that originally operated as the secondary controller beginsoperating as the secondary controller again. In such an example, thecloud computing instance (404) that formerly operated as the primarycontroller may be terminated. Readers will appreciate that inalternative embodiments, the cloud computing instance (404) that isoperating as the secondary controller after the failover event maycontinue to operate as the secondary controller and the cloud computinginstance (406) that operated as the primary controller after theoccurrence of the failover event may be terminated once the primary rolehas been assumed by the third cloud computing instance (not shown).

Readers will appreciate that while the embodiments described aboverelate to embodiments where one cloud computing instance (404) operatesas the primary controller and the second cloud computing instance (406)operates as the secondary controller, other embodiments are within thescope of the present disclosure. For example, each cloud computinginstance (404, 406) may operate as a primary controller for some portionof the address space supported by the cloud-based storage system (403),each cloud computing instance (404, 406) may operate as a primarycontroller where the servicing of I/O operations directed to thecloud-based storage system (403) are divided in some other way, and soon. In fact, in other embodiments where costs savings may be prioritizedover performance demands, only a single cloud computing instance mayexist that contains the storage controller application. In such anexample, a controller failure may take more time to recover from as anew cloud computing instance that includes the storage controllerapplication would need to be spun up rather than having an alreadycreated cloud computing instance take on the role of servicing I/Ooperations that would have otherwise been handled by the failed cloudcomputing instance.

The cloud-based storage system (403) depicted in FIG. 4 includes cloudcomputing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418,422). The cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) depicted inFIG. 4 may be embodied, for example, as instances of cloud computingresources that may be provided by the cloud computing environment (402)to support the execution of software applications. The cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) of FIG. 4 may differ from the cloudcomputing instances (404, 406) described above as the cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) of FIG. 4 have local storage (414, 418,422) resources whereas the cloud computing instances (404, 406) thatsupport the execution of the storage controller application (408, 410)need not have local storage resources. The cloud computing instances(424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) may beembodied, for example, as EC2 M5 instances that include one or moreSSDs, as EC2 R5 instances that include one or more SSDs, as EC2 I3instances that include one or more SSDs, and so on. In some embodiments,the local storage (414, 418, 422) must be embodied as solid-statestorage (e.g., SSDs) rather than storage that makes use of hard diskdrives.

In the example depicted in FIG. 4 , each of the cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) caninclude a software daemon (412, 416, 420) that, when executed by a cloudcomputing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) can present itself to thestorage controller applications (408, 410) as if the cloud computinginstance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) were a physical storage device (e.g., oneor more SSDs). In such an example, the software daemon (412, 416, 420)may include computer program instructions similar to those that wouldnormally be contained on a storage device such that the storagecontroller applications (408, 410) can send and receive the samecommands that a storage controller would send to storage devices. Insuch a way, the storage controller applications (408, 410) may includecode that is identical to (or substantially identical to) the code thatwould be executed by the controllers in the storage systems describedabove. In these and similar embodiments, communications between thestorage controller applications (408, 410) and the cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) mayutilize iSCSI, NVMe over TCP, messaging, a custom protocol, or in someother mechanism.

In the example depicted in FIG. 4 , each of the cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) mayalso be coupled to block-storage (426, 428, 430) that is offered by thecloud computing environment (402). The block-storage (426, 428, 430)that is offered by the cloud computing environment (402) may beembodied, for example, as Amazon Elastic Block Store (‘EBS’) volumes.For example, a first EBS volume (426) may be coupled to a first cloudcomputing instance (424 a), a second EBS volume (428) may be coupled toa second cloud computing instance (424 b), and a third EBS volume (430)may be coupled to a third cloud computing instance (424 n). In such anexample, the block-storage (426, 428, 430) that is offered by the cloudcomputing environment (402) may be utilized in a manner that is similarto how the NVRAM devices described above are utilized, as the softwaredaemon (412, 416, 420) (or some other module) that is executing within aparticular cloud comping instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) may, uponreceiving a request to write data, initiate a write of the data to itsattached EBS volume as well as a write of the data to its local storage(414, 418, 422) resources. In some alternative embodiments, data mayonly be written to the local storage (414, 418, 422) resources within aparticular cloud comping instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n). In analternative embodiment, rather than using the block-storage (426, 428,430) that is offered by the cloud computing environment (402) as NVRAM,actual RAM on each of the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) may be used as NVRAM, therebydecreasing network utilization costs that would be associated with usingan EBS volume as the NVRAM.

In the example depicted in FIG. 4 , the cloud computing instances (424a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) may be utilized, bycloud computing instances (404, 406) that support the execution of thestorage controller application (408, 410) to service I/O operations thatare directed to the cloud-based storage system (403). Consider anexample in which a first cloud computing instance (404) that isexecuting the storage controller application (408) is operating as theprimary controller. In such an example, the first cloud computinginstance (404) that is executing the storage controller application(408) may receive (directly or indirectly via the secondary controller)requests to write data to the cloud-based storage system (403) fromusers of the cloud-based storage system (403). In such an example, thefirst cloud computing instance (404) that is executing the storagecontroller application (408) may perform various tasks such as, forexample, deduplicating the data contained in the request, compressingthe data contained in the request, determining where to the write thedata contained in the request, and so on, before ultimately sending arequest to write a deduplicated, encrypted, or otherwise possiblyupdated version of the data to one or more of the cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422).Either cloud computing instance (404, 406), in some embodiments, mayreceive a request to read data from the cloud-based storage system (403)and may ultimately send a request to read data to one or more of thecloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414,418, 422).

Readers will appreciate that when a request to write data is received bya particular cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with localstorage (414, 418, 422), the software daemon (412, 416, 420) or someother module of computer program instructions that is executing on theparticular cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) may beconfigured to not only write the data to its own local storage (414,418, 422) resources and any appropriate block storage (426, 428, 430)that are offered by the cloud computing environment (402), but thesoftware daemon (412, 416, 420) or some other module of computer programinstructions that is executing on the particular cloud computinginstance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) may also be configured to write the datato cloud-based object storage (432) that is attached to the particularcloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n). The cloud-based objectstorage (432) that is attached to the particular cloud computinginstance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) may be embodied, for example, as AmazonSimple Storage Service (‘S3’) storage that is accessible by theparticular cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n). In otherembodiments, the cloud computing instances (404, 406) that each includethe storage controller application (408, 410) may initiate the storageof the data in the local storage (414, 418, 422) of the cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) and the cloud-based object storage(432).

Readers will appreciate that the software daemon (412, 416, 420) orother module of computer program instructions that writes the data toblock storage (e.g., local storage (414, 418, 422) resources) and alsowrites the data to cloud-based object storage (432) may be executed onprocessing units of dissimilar types (e.g., different types of cloudcomputing instances, cloud computing instances that contain differentprocessing units). In fact, the software daemon (412, 416, 420) or othermodule of computer program instructions that writes the data to blockstorage (e.g., local storage (414, 418, 422) resources) and also writesthe data to cloud-based object storage (432) can be migrated betweendifferent types of cloud computing instances based on demand.

Readers will appreciate that, as described above, the cloud-basedstorage system (403) may be used to provide block storage services tousers of the cloud-based storage system (403). While the local storage(414, 418, 422) resources and the block-storage (426, 428, 430)resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424b, 424 n) may support block-level access, the cloud-based object storage(432) that is attached to the particular cloud computing instance (424a, 424 b, 424 n) supports only object-based access. In order to addressthis, the software daemon (412, 416, 420) or some other module ofcomputer program instructions that is executing on the particular cloudcomputing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) may be configured to takeblocks of data, package those blocks into objects, and write the objectsto the cloud-based object storage (432) that is attached to theparticular cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n).

Consider an example in which data is written to the local storage (414,418, 422) resources and the block-storage (426, 428, 430) resources thatare utilized by the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) in 1MB blocks. In such an example, assume that a user of the cloud-basedstorage system (403) issues a request to write data that, after beingcompressed and deduplicated by the storage controller application (408,410) results in the need to write 5 MB of data. In such an example,writing the data to the local storage (414, 418, 422) resources and theblock-storage (426, 428, 430) resources that are utilized by the cloudcomputing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) is relatively straightforwardas 5 blocks that are 1 MB in size are written to the local storage (414,418, 422) resources and the block-storage (426, 428, 430) resources thatare utilized by the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n). Insuch an example, the software daemon (412, 416, 420) or some othermodule of computer program instructions that is executing on theparticular cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) may beconfigured to: 1) create a first object that includes the first 1 MB ofdata and write the first object to the cloud-based object storage (432),2) create a second object that includes the second 1 MB of data andwrite the second object to the cloud-based object storage (432), 3)create a third object that includes the third 1 MB of data and write thethird object to the cloud-based object storage (432), and so on. Assuch, in some embodiments, each object that is written to thecloud-based object storage (432) may be identical (or nearly identical)in size. Readers will appreciate that in such an example, metadata thatis associated with the data itself may be included in each object (e.g.,the first 1 MB of the object is data and the remaining portion ismetadata associated with the data).

Readers will appreciate that the cloud-based object storage (432) may beincorporated into the cloud-based storage system (403) to increase thedurability of the cloud-based storage system (403). Continuing with theexample described above where the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424b, 424 n) are EC2 instances, readers will understand that EC2 instancesare only guaranteed to have a monthly uptime of 99.9% and data stored inthe local instance store only persists during the lifetime of the EC2instance. As such, relying on the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) as the only source ofpersistent data storage in the cloud-based storage system (403) mayresult in a relatively unreliable storage system. Likewise, EBS volumesare designed for 99.999% availability. As such, even relying on EBS asthe persistent data store in the cloud-based storage system (403) mayresult in a storage system that is not sufficiently durable. Amazon S3,however, is designed to provide 99.999999999% durability, meaning that acloud-based storage system (403) that can incorporate S3 into its poolof storage is substantially more durable than various other options.

Readers will appreciate that while a cloud-based storage system (403)that can incorporate S3 into its pool of storage is substantially moredurable than various other options, utilizing S3 as the primary pool ofstorage may result in storage system that has relatively slow responsetimes and relatively long I/O latencies. As such, the cloud-basedstorage system (403) depicted in FIG. 4 not only stores data in S3 butthe cloud-based storage system (403) also stores data in local storage(414, 418, 422) resources and block-storage (426, 428, 430) resourcesthat are utilized by the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424n), such that read operations can be serviced from local storage (414,418, 422) resources and the block-storage (426, 428, 430) resources thatare utilized by the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n),thereby reducing read latency when users of the cloud-based storagesystem (403) attempt to read data from the cloud-based storage system(403).

In some embodiments, all data that is stored by the cloud-based storagesystem (403) may be stored in both: 1) the cloud-based object storage(432), and 2) at least one of the local storage (414, 418, 422)resources or block-storage (426, 428, 430) resources that are utilizedby the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n). In suchembodiments, the local storage (414, 418, 422) resources andblock-storage (426, 428, 430) resources that are utilized by the cloudcomputing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) may effectively operate ascache that generally includes all data that is also stored in S3, suchthat all reads of data may be serviced by the cloud computing instances(424 a, 424 b, 424 n) without requiring the cloud computing instances(424 a, 424 b, 424 n) to access the cloud-based object storage (432).Readers will appreciate that in other embodiments, however, all datathat is stored by the cloud-based storage system (403) may be stored inthe cloud-based object storage (432), but less than all data that isstored by the cloud-based storage system (403) may be stored in at leastone of the local storage (414, 418, 422) resources or block-storage(426, 428, 430) resources that are utilized by the cloud computinginstances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n). In such an example, various policiesmay be utilized to determine which subset of the data that is stored bythe cloud-based storage system (403) should reside in both: 1) thecloud-based object storage (432), and 2) at least one of the localstorage (414, 418, 422) resources or block-storage (426, 428, 430)resources that are utilized by the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424b, 424 n).

As described above, when the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b,424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) are embodied as EC2 instances,the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage(414, 418, 422) are only guaranteed to have a monthly uptime of 99.9%and data stored in the local instance store only persists during thelifetime of each cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) withlocal storage (414, 418, 422). As such, one or more modules of computerprogram instructions that are executing within the cloud-based storagesystem (403) (e.g., a monitoring module that is executing on its own EC2instance) may be designed to handle the failure of one or more of thecloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n) with local storage (414,418, 422). In such an example, the monitoring module may handle thefailure of one or more of the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b,424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) by creating one or more newcloud computing instances with local storage, retrieving data that wasstored on the failed cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n)from the cloud-based object storage (432), and storing the dataretrieved from the cloud-based object storage (432) in local storage onthe newly created cloud computing instances. Readers will appreciatethat many variants of this process may be implemented.

Consider an example in which all cloud computing instances (424 a, 424b, 424 n) with local storage (414, 418, 422) failed. In such an example,the monitoring module may create new cloud computing instances withlocal storage, where high-bandwidth instances types are selected thatallow for the maximum data transfer rates between the newly createdhigh-bandwidth cloud computing instances with local storage and thecloud-based object storage (432). Readers will appreciate that instancestypes are selected that allow for the maximum data transfer ratesbetween the new cloud computing instances and the cloud-based objectstorage (432) such that the new high-bandwidth cloud computing instancescan be rehydrated with data from the cloud-based object storage (432) asquickly as possible. Once the new high-bandwidth cloud computinginstances are rehydrated with data from the cloud-based object storage(432), less expensive lower-bandwidth cloud computing instances may becreated, data may be migrated to the less expensive lower-bandwidthcloud computing instances, and the high-bandwidth cloud computinginstances may be terminated.

Readers will appreciate that in some embodiments, the number of newcloud computing instances that are created may substantially exceed thenumber of cloud computing instances that are needed to locally store allof the data stored by the cloud-based storage system (403). The numberof new cloud computing instances that are created may substantiallyexceed the number of cloud computing instances that are needed tolocally store all of the data stored by the cloud-based storage system(403) in order to more rapidly pull data from the cloud-based objectstorage (432) and into the new cloud computing instances, as each newcloud computing instance can (in parallel) retrieve some portion of thedata stored by the cloud-based storage system (403). In suchembodiments, once the data stored by the cloud-based storage system(403) has been pulled into the newly created cloud computing instances,the data may be consolidated within a subset of the newly created cloudcomputing instances and those newly created cloud computing instancesthat are excessive may be terminated.

Consider an example in which 1000 cloud computing instances are neededin order to locally store all valid data that users of the cloud-basedstorage system (403) have written to the cloud-based storage system(403). In such an example, assume that all 1,000 cloud computinginstances fail. In such an example, the monitoring module may cause100,000 cloud computing instances to be created, where each cloudcomputing instance is responsible for retrieving, from the cloud-basedobject storage (432), distinct 1/100,000^(th) chunks of the valid datathat users of the cloud-based storage system (403) have written to thecloud-based storage system (403) and locally storing the distinct chunkof the dataset that it retrieved. In such an example, because each ofthe 100,000 cloud computing instances can retrieve data from thecloud-based object storage (432) in parallel, the caching layer may berestored 100 times faster as compared to an embodiment where themonitoring module only create 1000 replacement cloud computinginstances. In such an example, over time the data that is stored locallyin the 100,000 could be consolidated into 1,000 cloud computinginstances and the remaining 99,000 cloud computing instances could beterminated.

Readers will appreciate that various performance aspects of thecloud-based storage system (403) may be monitored (e.g., by a monitoringmodule that is executing in an EC2 instance) such that the cloud-basedstorage system (403) can be scaled-up or scaled-out as needed. Consideran example in which the monitoring module monitors the performance ofthe cloud-based storage system (403) via communications with one or moreof the cloud computing instances (404, 406) that each are used tosupport the execution of a storage controller application (408, 410),via monitoring communications between cloud computing instances (404,406, 424 a, 424 b, 424 n), via monitoring communications between cloudcomputing instances (404, 406, 424 a, 424 b, 424 n) and the cloud-basedobject storage (432), or in some other way. In such an example, assumethat the monitoring module determines that the cloud computing instances(404, 406) that are used to support the execution of a storagecontroller application (408, 410) are undersized and not sufficientlyservicing the I/O requests that are issued by users of the cloud-basedstorage system (403). In such an example, the monitoring module maycreate a new, more powerful cloud computing instance (e.g., a cloudcomputing instance of a type that includes more processing power, morememory, etc. . . . ) that includes the storage controller applicationsuch that the new, more powerful cloud computing instance can beginoperating as the primary controller. Likewise, if the monitoring moduledetermines that the cloud computing instances (404, 406) that are usedto support the execution of a storage controller application (408, 410)are oversized and that cost savings could be gained by switching to asmaller, less powerful cloud computing instance, the monitoring modulemay create a new, less powerful (and less expensive) cloud computinginstance that includes the storage controller application such that thenew, less powerful cloud computing instance can begin operating as theprimary controller.

Consider, as an additional example of dynamically sizing the cloud-basedstorage system (403), an example in which the monitoring moduledetermines that the utilization of the local storage that iscollectively provided by the cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b,424 n) has reached a predetermined utilization threshold (e.g., 95%). Insuch an example, the monitoring module may create additional cloudcomputing instances with local storage to expand the pool of localstorage that is offered by the cloud computing instances. Alternatively,the monitoring module may create one or more new cloud computinginstances that have larger amounts of local storage than the alreadyexisting cloud computing instances (424 a, 424 b, 424 n), such that datastored in an already existing cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b,424 n) can be migrated to the one or more new cloud computing instancesand the already existing cloud computing instance (424 a, 424 b, 424 n)can be terminated, thereby expanding the pool of local storage that isoffered by the cloud computing instances. Likewise, if the pool of localstorage that is offered by the cloud computing instances isunnecessarily large, data can be consolidated and some cloud computinginstances can be terminated.

Readers will appreciate that the cloud-based storage system (403) may besized up and down automatically by a monitoring module applying apredetermined set of rules that may be relatively simple of relativelycomplicated. In fact, the monitoring module may not only take intoaccount the current state of the cloud-based storage system (403), butthe monitoring module may also apply predictive policies that are basedon, for example, observed behavior (e.g., every night from 10 PM until 6AM usage of the storage system is relatively light), predeterminedfingerprints (e.g., every time a virtual desktop infrastructure adds 100virtual desktops, the number of IOPS directed to the storage systemincrease by X), and so on. In such an example, the dynamic scaling ofthe cloud-based storage system (403) may be based on current performancemetrics, predicted workloads, and many other factors, includingcombinations thereof.

Readers will further appreciate that because the cloud-based storagesystem (403) may be dynamically scaled, the cloud-based storage system(403) may even operate in a way that is more dynamic. Consider theexample of garbage collection. In a traditional storage system, theamount of storage is fixed. As such, at some point the storage systemmay be forced to perform garbage collection as the amount of availablestorage has become so constrained that the storage system is on theverge of running out of storage. In contrast, the cloud-based storagesystem (403) described here can always ‘add’ additional storage (e.g.,by adding more cloud computing instances with local storage). Becausethe cloud-based storage system (403) described here can always ‘add’additional storage, the cloud-based storage system (403) can make moreintelligent decisions regarding when to perform garbage collection. Forexample, the cloud-based storage system (403) may implement a policythat garbage collection only be performed when the number of IOPS beingserviced by the cloud-based storage system (403) falls below a certainlevel. In some embodiments, other system-level functions (e.g.,deduplication, compression) may also be turned off and on in response tosystem load, given that the size of the cloud-based storage system (403)is not constrained in the same way that traditional storage systems areconstrained.

Readers will appreciate that embodiments of the present disclosureresolve an issue with block-storage services offered by some cloudcomputing environments as some cloud computing environments only allowfor one cloud computing instance to connect to a block-storage volume ata single time. For example, in Amazon AWS, only a single EC2 instancemay be connected to an EBS volume. Through the use of EC2 instances withlocal storage, embodiments of the present disclosure can offermulti-connect capabilities where multiple EC2 instances can connect toanother EC2 instance with local storage (‘a drive instance’). In suchembodiments, the drive instances may include software executing withinthe drive instance that allows the drive instance to support I/Odirected to a particular volume from each connected EC2 instance. Assuch, some embodiments of the present disclosure may be embodied asmulti-connect block storage services that may not include all of thecomponents depicted in FIG. 4 .

In some embodiments, especially in embodiments where the cloud-basedobject storage (432) resources are embodied as Amazon S3, thecloud-based storage system (403) may include one or more modules (e.g.,a module of computer program instructions executing on an EC2 instance)that are configured to ensure that when the local storage of aparticular cloud computing instance is rehydrated with data from S3, theappropriate data is actually in S3. This issue arises largely because S3implements an eventual consistency model where, when overwriting anexisting object, reads of the object will eventually (but notnecessarily immediately) become consistent and will eventually (but notnecessarily immediately) return the overwritten version of the object.To address this issue, in some embodiments of the present disclosure,objects in S3 are never overwritten. Instead, a traditional ‘overwrite’would result in the creation of the new object (that includes theupdated version of the data) and the eventual deletion of the old object(that includes the previous version of the data).

In some embodiments of the present disclosure, as part of an attempt tonever (or almost never) overwrite an object, when data is written to S3the resultant object may be tagged with a sequence number. In someembodiments, these sequence numbers may be persisted elsewhere (e.g., ina database) such that at any point in time, the sequence numberassociated with the most up-to-date version of some piece of data can beknown. In such a way, a determination can be made as to whether S3 hasthe most recent version of some piece of data by merely reading thesequence number associated with an object—and without actually readingthe data from S3. The ability to make this determination may beparticularly important when a cloud computing instance with localstorage crashes, as it would be undesirable to rehydrate the localstorage of a replacement cloud computing instance with out-of-date data.In fact, because the cloud-based storage system (403) does not need toaccess the data to verify its validity, the data can stay encrypted andaccess charges can be avoided.

In the example depicted in FIG. 4 , and as described above, the cloudcomputing instances (404, 406) that are used to support the execution ofthe storage controller applications (408, 410) may operate in aprimary/secondary configuration where one of the cloud computinginstances (404, 406) that are used to support the execution of thestorage controller applications (408, 410) is responsible for writingdata to the local storage (414, 418, 422) that is attached to the cloudcomputing instances with local storage (424 a, 424 b, 424 n). In such anexample, however, because each of the cloud computing instances (404,406) that are used to support the execution of the storage controllerapplications (408, 410) can access the cloud computing instances withlocal storage (424 a, 424 b, 424 n), both of the cloud computinginstances (404, 406) that are used to support the execution of thestorage controller applications (408, 410) can service requests to readdata from the cloud-based storage system (403).

For further explanation, FIG. 5 sets forth an example of an additionalcloud-based storage system (502) in accordance with some embodiments ofthe present disclosure. In the example depicted in FIG. 5 , thecloud-based storage system (502) is created entirely in a cloudcomputing environment (402) such as, for example, AWS, Microsoft Azure,Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and others. Thecloud-based storage system (502) may be used to provide services similarto the services that may be provided by the storage systems describedabove. For example, the cloud-based storage system (502) may be used toprovide block storage services to users of the cloud-based storagesystem (502), the cloud-based storage system (403) may be used toprovide storage services to users of the cloud-based storage system(403) through the use of solid-state storage, and so on.

The cloud-based storage system (502) depicted in FIG. 5 may operate in amanner that is somewhat similar to the cloud-based storage system (403)depicted in FIG. 4 , as the cloud-based storage system (502) depicted inFIG. 5 includes a storage controller application (506) that is beingexecuted in a cloud computing instance (504). In the example depicted inFIG. 5 , however, the cloud computing instance (504) that executes thestorage controller application (506) is a cloud computing instance (504)with local storage (508). In such an example, data written to thecloud-based storage system (502) may be stored in both the local storage(508) of the cloud computing instance (504) and also in cloud-basedobject storage (510) in the same manner that the cloud-based objectstorage (510) was used above. In some embodiments, for example, thestorage controller application (506) may be responsible for writing datato the local storage (508) of the cloud computing instance (504) while asoftware daemon (512) may be responsible for ensuring that the data iswritten to the cloud-based object storage (510) in the same manner thatthe cloud-based object storage (510) was used above. In otherembodiments, the same entity (e.g., the storage controller application)may be responsible for writing data to the local storage (508) of thecloud computing instance (504) and also responsible for ensuring thatthe data is written to the cloud-based object storage (510) in the samemanner that the cloud-based object storage (510) was used above

Readers will appreciate that a cloud-based storage system (502) depictedin FIG. 5 may represent a less expensive, less robust version of acloud-based storage system than was depicted in FIG. 4 . In yetalternative embodiments, the cloud-based storage system (502) depictedin FIG. 5 could include additional cloud computing instances with localstorage that supported the execution of the storage controllerapplication (506), such that failover can occur if the cloud computinginstance (504) that executes the storage controller application (506)fails. Likewise, in other embodiments, the cloud-based storage system(502) depicted in FIG. 5 can include additional cloud computinginstances with local storage to expand the amount local storage that isoffered by the cloud computing instances in the cloud-based storagesystem (502).

Readers will appreciate that many of the failure scenarios describedabove with reference to FIG. 4 would also apply cloud-based storagesystem (502) depicted in FIG. 5 . Likewise, the cloud-based storagesystem (502) depicted in FIG. 5 may be dynamically scaled up and down ina similar manner as described above. The performance of varioussystem-level tasks may also be executed by the cloud-based storagesystem (502) depicted in FIG. 5 in an intelligent way, as describedabove.

Readers will appreciate that, in an effort to increase the resiliency ofthe cloud-based storage systems described above, various components maybe located within different availability zones. For example, a firstcloud computing instance that supports the execution of the storagecontroller application may be located within a first availability zonewhile a second cloud computing instance that also supports the executionof the storage controller application may be located within a secondavailability zone. Likewise, the cloud computing instances with localstorage may be distributed across multiple availability zones. In fact,in some embodiments, an entire second cloud-based storage system couldbe created in a different availability zone, where data in the originalcloud-based storage system is replicated (synchronously orasynchronously) to the second cloud-based storage system so that if theentire original cloud-based storage system went down, a replacementcloud-based storage system (the second cloud-based storage system) couldbe brought up in a trivial amount of time.

Readers will appreciate that the cloud-based storage systems describedherein may be used as part of a fleet of storage systems. In fact, thecloud-based storage systems described herein may be paired withon-premises storage systems. In such an example, data stored in theon-premises storage may be replicated (synchronously or asynchronously)to the cloud-based storage system, and vice versa.

For further explanation, FIG. 6 sets forth a flowchart illustrating anexample method of cloning storage systems in a cloud computingenvironment (402) in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. The cloud computing environment (402) may be similar to thecloud computing environments described above in the preceding figures.In the example depicted in FIG. 6 , the cloud computing environment(402) may be configured to support the execution of one more modules ofcomputer program instructions that perform the steps described below.

The example method depicted in FIG. 6 includes receiving (604) a request(602) to create a cloud-based storage system. The request (602) tocreate a cloud-based storage system may be issued for a variety ofreasons and may be issued by a variety of actors in various embodiments.For example, the request (602) to create a cloud-based storage systemmay be issued by an on-premises storage system (or another on-premisescomputing device) as part of disaster recovery operations that are totake place when the on-premises storage system is not performing asexpected. Alternatively, the request (602) to create a cloud-basedstorage system may be issued by an administrator of a cloud-basedstorage system as part of an effort to clone the cloud-based storagesystem. In such examples, the cloud computing environment (402) may beconfigured, through the use of one more modules of computer programinstructions that perform the steps described herein, to provide an APIor similar interface through which requests (602) to create acloud-based storage system may be submitted. Readers will appreciatethat requests (602) to create a cloud-based storage system may be issuedfor a many additional reasons and by many different actors in otherembodiments, some of which will be explained in greater detail below.

The example method depicted in FIG. 6 also includes retrieving (610),from cloud-based object storage (432), one or more objects (606) toinclude in the cloud-based storage system. Readers will appreciate thatone or more objects (606) to include in the cloud-based storage systemmay reside within cloud-based object storage (432) for a variety ofreasons. Consider a first example in which a first cloud-based storagesystem is supported by the cloud computing environment (402), where thefirst cloud-based storage system is similar to the cloud-based storagesystem described in FIG. 4 . In such an example, as part of theoperation of the first cloud-based storage system, data that is writtento the first cloud-based storage system may be stored in the cloudcomputing instances with local storage (424 a, 424 b, 424 n of FIG. 4 )as well as in the cloud-based object storage (432). For this particularexample, further assume that the request (602) to create a cloud-basedstorage system was issued as part of an attempt to clone the firstcloud-based storage system. In such an example, the one or more objectsthat are stored in the cloud-based object storage (432) as part ofservicing write operations directed to the first cloud-based storagesystem may be retrieved (610) from the cloud-based object storage (432)for subsequent inclusion in a second cloud-based storage system thatwill ultimately be created as described below.

As an additional example, consider a second example in which anon-premises storage system (i.e., a storage system that does not residewithin the cloud computing environment) periodically uploads the datathat is stored by the on-premises storage system to the cloud-basedobject storage (432) to act essentially as a backup of the on-premisesstorage system. In the example, further assume that the request (602) tocreate a cloud-based storage system was issued as part of an attempt torecover from a disaster event experienced by the on-premises storagesystem. In such an example, the one or more objects that are stored inthe cloud-based object storage (432) may be retrieved (610) from thecloud-based object storage (432) for subsequent inclusion in acloud-based storage system that will ultimately be created as describedbelow and ultimately utilized to replace (at least temporarily) theon-premises storage system that has experienced the disaster event.

In the example method depicted in FIG. 6 , retrieving (610), fromcloud-based object storage (432), one or more objects (606) to includein the cloud-based storage system may be carried out, for example,through the use of information that is maintained to associate objects(606) that are stored in the cloud-based object storage (432) withstorage systems that are associated with those objects (606). Continuingwith the first example described above, in which a first cloud-basedstorage system is supported by the cloud computing environment (402),information may be maintained that associates each object that waswritten to the cloud-based object storage (432) as the result ofservicing write operations that are directed to the first cloud-basedstorage system with an identifier associated with the first cloud-basedstorage system. Such information may also include additional informationsuch as, for example, information describing whether the data containedin a particular object is still valid (or whether the data contained ina particular object has been invalid and is available for garbagecollection), a timestamp to capture the point-in-time that the data wasoriginally written to the first cloud-based storage system, a timestampto capture the point-in-time that the data was originally invalidated bythe first cloud-based storage system, and so on. In such an example,when a particular storage system is being cloned, all objects that areassociated with the particular storage system that is being cloned maybe retrieved (610) from the cloud-based object storage (432).

The example method depicted in FIG. 6 also includes creating (612) thecloud-based storage system (403). In the example method depicted in FIG.6 , creating (612) the cloud-based storage system (403) can includestoring, in block storage (614) of the cloud-based storage system (403),data (608) contained in the one or more objects (606) retrieved from thecloud-based object storage (432). In such an example, the necessarycloud computing instances, including cloud computing instances withlocal storage, may be created and the data contained in the one or moreobjects (606) retrieved from the cloud-based object storage (432) may bestored in the local storage that is associated with such cloud computinginstances.

For further explanation, FIG. 7 sets forth a flowchart illustrating anadditional example method of cloning storage systems in a cloudcomputing environment in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. The example method depicted in FIG. 7 is similar to theexample method depicted in FIG. 6 , as the example method depicted inFIG. 7 also includes receiving (604) a request (602) to create acloud-based storage system, retrieving (610), from cloud-based objectstorage (432), one or more objects (606) to include in the cloud-basedstorage system, and creating (612) the cloud-based storage system (403),including storing, in block storage (614) of the cloud-based storagesystem (403), data (608) contained in the one or more objects (606)retrieved from the cloud-based object storage (432).

In the example method depicted in FIG. 7 , the request (602) to createthe cloud-based storage system can include an identification (702) of astorage system that is to be cloned. The storage system that is to becloned may be embodied, for example, as another cloud-based storagesystem, as an on-premises storage system, and so on. The identification(702) of the storage system that is to be cloned may be embodied, forexample, as a value that is unique to a particular storage system thatcan be used to identify a particular storage system from a collection ofstorage systems.

In the example method depicted in FIG. 7 , retrieving (610), fromcloud-based object storage (432), one or more objects (606) to includein the cloud-based storage system can include retrieving (704), from thecloud-based object storage (432), one or more objects that contain validdata for the storage system that is to be cloned. Readers willappreciate that some objects that are associated with a particularstorage system and stored in the cloud-based object storage (432) maycontain invalid, out-of-date data. For example, a user may initiallywrite a first piece of a data to a logical address supported by theparticular storage system and then a user may subsequently write anupdated, second piece of data to the same logical address. In such anexample, a first object may contain the first piece of data and a secondobject may contain the second piece of data. In this example, as part ofwriting the second piece of data to the storage system, the first objectmay be marked as invalid (through metadata, mapping tables, and so on).By retrieving (704) only the objects that contain valid data for thestorage system that is to be cloned, the cloud-based storage system(403) that is ultimately created (612) will not include out-of-date datathat is no longer valid in the storage system that is to be cloned.

For further explanation, FIG. 8 sets forth a flowchart illustrating anadditional example method of cloning storage systems in a cloudcomputing environment in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. The example method depicted in FIG. 8 is similar to theexample methods depicted in FIG. 6 and FIG. 7 , as the example methoddepicted in FIG. 8 also includes receiving (604) a request (602) tocreate a cloud-based storage system, retrieving (610), from cloud-basedobject storage (432), one or more objects (606) to include in thecloud-based storage system, and creating (612) the cloud-based storagesystem (403), including storing, in block storage (614) of thecloud-based storage system (403), data (608) contained in the one ormore objects (606) retrieved from the cloud-based object storage (432).

In the example method depicted in FIG. 8 , the request (602) to createthe cloud-based storage system can include an identification (702) of acloud-based storage system that is to be cloned and information (802)describing a previous point-in-time. The information (802) describing aprevious point-in-time may be embodied, for example, as an absolute time(e.g., 3:45 PM PCT on Mar. 1, 2019), as a relative time (e.g., 1 hourago), or even expressed in some other way (e.g., before a particularsoftware update was applied). In such an example, the previouspoint-in-time can be used, in effect, to roll back a particular storagesystem to a previous point-in-time by creating (612) a cloud-basedstorage system that is in the same state as the particular storagesystem was at that previous point-in-time.

In the example method depicted in FIG. 8 , retrieving (610), fromcloud-based object storage (432), one or more objects (606) to includein the cloud-based storage system can include retrieving (804), from thecloud-based object storage (432), one or more objects that contain datathat was valid for the storage system that is to be cloned at theprevious point-in-time. Retrieving (804), from the cloud-based objectstorage (432), one or more objects that contain data that was valid forthe storage system that is to be cloned at the previous point-in-timemay be carried out, for example, through the use of information that ismaintained to associate objects (606) that are stored in the cloud-basedobject storage (432) with storage systems that are associated with thoseobjects (606). As described above, information may be maintained thatassociates each object that was written to the cloud-based objectstorage (432) as the result of servicing write operations that aredirected to particular storage system with an identifier associated withthe particular storage system. Such information may also includeadditional information such as, for example, information describingwhether the data contained in a particular object is still valid (orwhether the data contained in a particular object has been invalid andis available for garbage collection), a timestamp to capture thepoint-in-time that the data was originally written to the firstcloud-based storage system, a timestamp to capture the point-in-timethat the data was originally invalidated by the first cloud-basedstorage system, and so on. In such an example, when a particular storagesystem is being cloned, all objects that were valid at the previouspoint-in-time and are associated with the particular storage system thatis being cloned may be retrieved (610) from the cloud-based objectstorage (432).

For further explanation, FIG. 9 sets forth a flowchart illustrating anadditional example method of cloning storage systems in a cloudcomputing environment in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. The example method depicted in FIG. 9 is similar to theexample methods depicted in FIGS. 6-8 , as the example method depictedin FIG. 9 also includes receiving (604) a request (602) to create acloud-based storage system, retrieving (610), from cloud-based objectstorage (432), one or more objects (606) to include in the cloud-basedstorage system, and creating (612) the cloud-based storage system (403),including storing, in block storage (614) of the cloud-based storagesystem (403), data (608) contained in the one or more objects (606)retrieved from the cloud-based object storage (432).

In the example method depicted in FIG. 9 , creating (612) thecloud-based storage system (403) can include replicating (902)configuration related information associated with the storage systemthat is to be cloned to the cloud-based storage system (403).Configuration related information associated with the storage systemthat is to be cloned can include, for example, information describingconnectivity between the storage system that is to be cloned and one ormore hosts that issue I/O requests to the storage system that is to becloned, information related to applications that are executing on thestorage system that is to be cloned, and other information that isdistinct from user data that is stored by the storage system that is tobe cloned. In such a way, the entire software stack of the storagesystem that is to be cloned may be replicated to the cloud-based storagesystem (403), such that the cloud-based storage system (403) can be atrue replica of the entire environment for storage system that is to becloned—rather than just being destination for the user data that ismaintained by the storage system that is to be cloned.

For further explanation, FIG. 10 sets forth a flowchart illustrating anadditional example method of cloning storage systems in a cloudcomputing environment in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. The example method depicted in FIG. 10 is similar to theexample methods depicted in FIGS. 6-9 , as the example method depictedin FIG. 10 also includes receiving (604) a request (602) to create acloud-based storage system, retrieving (610), from cloud-based objectstorage (432), one or more objects (606) to include in the cloud-basedstorage system, and creating (612) the cloud-based storage system (403),including storing, in block storage (614) of the cloud-based storagesystem (403), data (608) contained in the one or more objects (606)retrieved from the cloud-based object storage (432).

The example method depicted in FIG. 10 includes verifying (1002) thateach write to the one or more objects has been acknowledged. Readerswill appreciate that the cloud-based object storage (432) that is usedto store the objects (606) that are to be included in the cloud-basedstorage system (403) may implement an eventual consistency model where,if no new updates are made to a given object, eventually all accesses tothat object will return the last updated value. As such, in order toensure that the one or more objects that are retrieved (610) from thecloud-based object storage (432) and ultimately included in thecloud-based storage system (403) represent the data that is included inthe storage system that is to be replicated, it may be necessary toverify (1002) that each write to the one or more objects that areretrieved (610) from the cloud-based object storage (432) have beenacknowledged so that the cloud-based storage system (403) represents anaccurate replica of the storage system that is to be replicated.

For further explanation, FIG. 11 sets forth a flowchart illustrating anadditional example method of cloning storage systems in a cloudcomputing environment in accordance with some embodiments of the presentdisclosure. The example method depicted in FIG. 11 is similar to theexample methods depicted in FIGS. 6-10 , as the example method depictedin FIG. 11 also includes receiving (604) a request (602) to create acloud-based storage system, retrieving (610), from cloud-based objectstorage (432), one or more objects (606) to include in the cloud-basedstorage system, and creating (612) the cloud-based storage system (403),including storing, in block storage (614) of the cloud-based storagesystem (403), data (608) contained in the one or more objects (606)retrieved from the cloud-based object storage (432).

The example method depicted in FIG. 11 also includes determining (1102)that at least some portion of a dataset stored by a storage system thatis to be cloned has not been committed to the cloud-based object storage(432). Readers will appreciate that because the cloud-based objectstorage (432) is eventually consistent, or for some other reason, theremay be a delay between the time that some portion of a dataset is storedby a storage system and the time that such a portion of the dataset iscommitted to the cloud-based object storage (432). As such, one or moremodules of computer program instructions executing in the cloudcomputing environment (402) (or elsewhere) may be configured to maintaininformation describing what data has been stored by a storage systemthat is to be cloned and what data has been committed to the cloud-basedobject storage (432). For example, sequence numbers associated writeoperations that have been successfully serviced by the storage systemthat is to be cloned may be tracked and associated with write operationsthat are directed to the cloud-based object storage (432) for thepurpose of storing the data that was successfully written to the storagesystem. In such an example, if a particular write operation that wasdirected to the cloud-based object storage (432) for the purpose ofstoring the data that was successfully written to the storage system hasnot been acknowledged, it may be affirmatively determined (1102) that atleast some portion of a dataset stored by a storage system that is to becloned has not been committed to the cloud-based object storage (432).

The example method depicted in FIG. 11 also includes delaying (1104)retrieval, from cloud-based object storage (432), of at least one objectto include in the cloud-based storage system (403). The retrieval, fromcloud-based object storage (432), of at least one object to include inthe cloud-based storage system (403) may be delayed (1104), for example,until a particular write operation that was directed to the cloud-basedobject storage (432) for the purpose of storing the data that wassuccessfully written to the storage system has been acknowledged. Thatis, once an object has been successfully committed to the cloud-basedobject storage (432), it may be retrieved (610) for eventual inclusionin the cloud-based storage system (403).

Readers will appreciate that in the examples described above, invalidobjects associated with the storage system that is to be cloned may beretained in dependence upon a predetermined retention policy. Thepredetermined retention policy may specify, for example, a minimumamount of time that objects associated with invalid data should beretained in the cloud-based object storage (432). In such a way, objectsassociated with invalid data may be retained for a predetermined amountof time so that previous point-in-time replicas of a particular storagesystem can be created so long as the objects associated with invaliddata are retained in the cloud-based object storage (432).

In view of the explanations set forth above, readers will recognize thatthe benefits of cloning storage systems in a cloud computing environmentin accordance with some embodiments of the present disclosure include:

-   -   a. The ability to bring up multiple clones at the same time        without ever impacting the operation of the storage system that        is being cloned. This ability may be useful in many situations,        including situations in which various changes to a storage        system may be effectively made, via its clone, prior to actually        changing the storage system.    -   b. The ability to offload computationally intensive tasks (e.g.,        rebuilding a file system, indexing a dataset) to a storage        system that is being cloned, thereby preserving the resources of        the storage system that is being clones for servicing I/O        operations.    -   c. The ability to scale immediately to address situations in        which I/O accesses directed to a particular storage system        decrease or increase.

Example embodiments are described largely in the context of a fullyfunctional computer system. Readers of skill in the art will recognize,however, that the present disclosure also may be embodied in a computerprogram product disposed upon computer readable storage media for usewith any suitable data processing system. Such computer readable storagemedia may be any storage medium for machine-readable information,including magnetic media, optical media, or other suitable media.Examples of such media include magnetic disks in hard drives ordiskettes, compact disks for optical drives, magnetic tape, and othersas will occur to those of skill in the art. Persons skilled in the artwill immediately recognize that any computer system having suitableprogramming means will be capable of executing the steps of the methodas embodied in a computer program product. Persons skilled in the artwill recognize also that, although some of the example embodimentsdescribed in this specification are oriented to software installed andexecuting on computer hardware, nevertheless, alternative embodimentsimplemented as firmware or as hardware are well within the scope of thepresent disclosure.

Embodiments can include be a system, a method, and/or a computer programproduct. The computer program product may include a computer readablestorage medium (or media) having computer readable program instructionsthereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of the presentdisclosure.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present disclosure may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Smalltalk, C++ or the like, andconventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present disclosure.

Aspects of the present disclosure are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to some embodimentsof the disclosure. It will be understood that each block of theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations ofblocks in the flowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can beimplemented by computer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present disclosure. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method comprising: receiving a request tocreate a cloud-based storage system; creating a cloud-based storagesystem based on the request, the cloud-based storage system comprisingat least one cloud computing resource implementing a storage controllerapplication and one or more cloud-based storage devices; retrieving,from a cloud-based storage, data elements to include in the cloud-basedstorage system using information that associates the data elements withone or more cloud-based storage systems; and storing, in the one or morecloud-based storage devices, data contained in the data elementsretrieved from the cloud-based storage.
 2. The method of claim 1,further comprising: determining that at least some portion of a datasetstored by the one or more cloud-based storage systems has not beencommitted to the cloud-based storage; and delaying retrieval, from thecloud-based storage, of at least one data element to include in thecloud-based storage system.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein creatingthe cloud-based storage system includes replicating configurationrelated information associated with one of the one or more cloud-basedstorage systems.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein the configurationrelated information comprises information describing connectivitybetween the one of the one or more cloud-based storage systems and oneor more hosts that issue I/O requests to the one of the one or morecloud-based storage systems.
 5. The method of claim 1, whereinretrieving data elements to include in the cloud-based storage systemcomprises retrieving, from the cloud-based storage, data elements thatcontain valid data for the cloud-based storage system.
 6. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the request to create the cloud-based storage systemincludes information describing a previous point-in-time, and whereinretrieving data elements to include in the cloud-based storage systemcomprises retrieving, from the cloud-based storage, data elements thatcontain data that was valid for the one or more cloud-based storagesystems at the previous point-in-time.
 7. The method of claim 1, whereininvalid data elements associated with the one or more cloud-basedstorage system are retained in dependence upon a predetermined retentionpolicy.
 8. The method of claim 1, wherein retrieving, from thecloud-based storage, data elements to include in the cloud-based storagesystem includes verifying that each write to the data elements has beenacknowledged.
 9. The method of claim 1, wherein the data elements werepreviously written to the cloud-based storage as part of servicingmodifying operations directed to the one or more cloud-based storagesystems.
 10. The method of claim 1, wherein the request to create thecloud-based storage system comprises a request to clone one of the oneor more cloud-based storage systems.
 11. An apparatus comprising acomputer processor, a computer memory operatively coupled to thecomputer processor, the computer memory having disposed within itcomputer program instructions that, when executed by the computerprocessor, cause the apparatus to carry out the steps of: receiving arequest to create a cloud-based storage system; creating a cloud-basedstorage system based on the request, the cloud-based storage systemcomprising at least one cloud computing resource implementing a storagecontroller application and one or more cloud-based storage devices;retrieving, from a cloud-based storage, data elements to include in thecloud-based storage system using information that associates the dataelements with one or more cloud-based storage systems; and storing, inthe one or more cloud-based storage devices, data contained in the dataelements retrieved from the cloud-based storage.
 12. The apparatus ofclaim 11, further comprising computer program instructions that, whenexecuted by the computer processor, cause the apparatus to carry out thesteps of: determining that at least some portion of a dataset stored bythe one or more cloud-based storage systems has not been committed tothe cloud-based storage; and delaying retrieval, from the cloud-basedstorage, of at least one data element to include in the cloud-basedstorage system.
 13. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein creating thecloud-based storage system includes replicating configuration relatedinformation associated with one of the one or more cloud-based storagesystems.
 14. The apparatus of claim 13, wherein the configurationrelated information comprises information describing connectivitybetween the one of the one or more cloud-based storage systems and oneor more hosts that issue I/O requests to the one of the one or morecloud-based storage systems.
 15. The apparatus of claim 11, whereinretrieving data elements to include in the cloud-based storage systemcomprises retrieving, from the cloud-based storage, data elements thatcontain valid data for the cloud-based storage system.
 16. The apparatusof claim 11, wherein the request to create the cloud-based storagesystem includes information describing a previous point-in-time, andwherein retrieving data elements to include in the cloud-based storagesystem comprises retrieving, from the cloud-based storage, data elementsthat contain data that was valid for the one or more cloud-based storagesystems at the previous point-in-time.
 17. The apparatus of claim 11,wherein invalid data elements associated with the one or morecloud-based storage system are retained in dependence upon apredetermined retention policy.
 18. The apparatus of claim 11, whereinretrieving, from the cloud-based storage, data elements to include inthe cloud-based storage system includes verifying that each write to thedata elements has been acknowledged.
 19. The apparatus of claim 11,wherein the data elements were previously written to the cloud-basedstorage as part of servicing modifying operations directed to the one ormore cloud-based storage systems.
 20. A computer program productdisposed upon a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, thecomputer program product comprising computer program instructions that,when executed, cause a computer to carry out the steps of: receiving arequest to create a cloud-based storage system; creating a cloud-basedstorage system based on the request, the cloud-based storage systemcomprising at least one cloud computing resource implementing a storagecontroller application and one or more cloud-based storage devices;retrieving, from a cloud-based storage, data elements to include in thecloud-based storage system using information that associates the dataelements with one or more cloud-based storage systems; and storing, inthe one or more cloud-based storage devices, data contained in the dataelements retrieved from the cloud-based storage.